Canticle
by CeilidhO
Summary: COMPLETE. Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully’s new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to
1. Prologue

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

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Salt Lake City, Utah  
June 30, 2003  
2:04 am

The_ People_ magazine was open on the card table, the glossy pages rippled and gleaming in the faint glow from the streetlamps outside the third floor window. The room was cast in liquid shadow, the corners as dark as the blackest velvet, the rest of the space shifting orange and grey with the advent and retreat of passing headlights. They swept around the room like a searchlight as the cars rumbled past, but somehow the corners remained veiled and pitch dark. There was a small shift of motion in the farthest corner, but it was soon still.

From its perch on the low table, the magazine trumpeted: UTAH KILLER CAUGHT: HIS OWN SON THE ONLY SURVIVOR! Underneath, in slightly less abrasive tones, it read: _George Hoffman wreaked havoc on the Four Corners states for nearly six years. Now, his only surviving victim, his own 9-year-old son, tells us his story._

The magazine went on to recount, in some detail, the life of one Judas Laurence Hoffman, the only child of George and Miriam: about his parents divorce, his mother's death four years ago, being raised by the kindly neighbors. It told, in the kind of hushed glee that only gossip mongerers can muster, of how, three weeks earlier, his father had gained custody of the small boy at the height of his killing spree, and planned to make Judas his final victim.

The opposite page featured small school photographs of each of the other eleven victims, and glossy photos of the ambulance loading Judas in, lit by harsh flashbulb, two exhausted looking FBI agents emerging from the dark warehouse behind the swirl of fluorescent activity in the foreground.

The story continued after that, with more lurid photos and monstrosities of violence described in breathless detail, but the boy in the corner had grown too sickened after the third page and had left the article sprawled where he had left it.

He had found the magazine in the back of his new foster parents linen closet, bought with the titillation of celebrity and hidden with the nausea and shame that follows. The recognition of the reality of the small boy's torments had buried the _People_ in the darkness of the back shelves, but his restless despair had found it again, dragged it up to the shadow of his room, and read it with mounting horror as the night crept in. The hours after he had shoved away the pages had been filled with stillness and sickness and his desperate loneliness and fear. Midnight had come and gone, but he had barely noticed the passage of time, marking it only by the flashing swing of headlights across the far walls.

He stirred again, and suddenly a thin, pale hand slipped out into the shifting light. It flicked the thick page of the magazine to a typically blurry photo of a man in his early fifties, with a strong nose and piercing black eyes topped with obsidian dark hair. The caption decreed: _The killer in front of his Salt Lake City home, an unassuming house in a good neighborhood._ A delicate finger stroked the image, captivated by the man trapped inside it. A moan crept out from the darkness.

"Daddy…"

The black corner jumped with the wrenching sob of the object within. It let out a sharp cry as the sudden movement tore at the stitches that held together the delicate flesh of its back, that bound the slashed canyons of his bloody wings.

In the infinite night of the lonely foster home, Judas Hoffman cried and cried until his hands dripped tears like blood, until the room echoed back the desperate sorrow of his screams, until he dried out his throat and his heart and his lungs, until he felt himself shrivel up and pucker together like the scars that rent his body.

He cried and cried until he faded deep into unconsciousness, and into the pitiless world of nightmares.

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**A/N**: Hey all! The final installment in this series is now at hand. I'd love to know what you think, and if you're still interested in this storyline/ series. In other words, please review! (And next chapter, we rejoin our valiant heroes, Mulder and Scully!)

_The River_ is on hold, because it's really pissing me off and I want it to be perfect. So this is to tide you over until I can fix it.

Thanks, Ceilidh


	2. Light and Wings

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

* * *

Quantico, Virginia

October 19, 2007

4:32 pm

           With a quiet whirr, a searing beam of light sliced through the dark air and splashed onto a drop-down of white canvas.  Golden dust motes danced in the beam.  There was a click, and a picture appeared on the screen, a color photo of a fifty-something year old man with graying black hair.  His eyes were jet black, and even in the faded medium of the projector, they leaped out in malicious brilliance.

           "George Nathaniel Hoffman," an even voice intoned, floating from somewhere in the darkness behind the whirring machine.  "Called in the first years of his murders 'the Choirmaster'.  He killed eleven boys between 1997 and 2003, and carved _these_…"  The image on the white canvas changed abruptly to a stark autopsy photo of a small boy.  An incredible set of carved wings blazed out from his back.  "…on the backs of his victims.  His murders had a pronounced religious bent: each of his victims had the name of a biblical Disciple."

           The class was absolutely silent, staring in disgust at the body on the screen.  A small voice crept out from the back of the lecture theatre, hesitant and pensive.

           "But, sir, weren't there twelve Disciples in the Bible?"

           Fox Mulder stepped out from behind the projector and into the beam of light.  He scanned the audience for the speaker, and finally caught his eye on the young man standing in almost the last row.  "That's right, Munroe.  There were twelve.  However, George Hoffman was stopped before he could complete his… 'set', if you will.  He did, however, manage to abduct his final victim.  Thankfully, investigators reached Hoffman before he could kill this final victim.  The boy was only injured."

           Munroe spoke again, his voice gaining in strength.  "Which Disciple was it, sir?  The last one, I mean."

           Mulder sighed, knowing the effect his words would have on the students.  "Judas.  The final victim was his nine year old son, Judas Hoffman."

           The class erupted, wild with protestations and disgust.  It took Mulder almost three minutes to quiet them, but he was finally able to carry on with his lecture.  "As I said, investigators were able to reach Jude before he was killed.  George Hoffman was killed, in self defense, by the lead agent in the investigation, Dana Scully."  Mulder couldn't keep the warmth of affection out of his voice.  He reached over to turn on the room lights.  "Now, as this is a Behavioral Science course, let's get to the Behavioral Science.  Based on what you've heard, what kind of offender was George Hoffman: organized, disorganized, or mixed?  Yes, you there…"

           A twenty minutes later, a buzzer sounded, and the class began to collect their books and papers.  Mulder called to them:

           "We'll continue Wednesday.  Until then, read pages ninety to one hundred in the textbook.  They deal with the case and the principles and tactics used to investigate it."

           At the top of the hall, the student Munroe paused in packing up his materials.  "Agent Mulder," he asked.  "Whatever happened to Judas Hoffman?"

           The class was instantly silent again.  Mulder felt sadness well up in him.  "I don't know, Munroe.  I have no idea."

           Suddenly a voice rang out from near the door at the top of the room.  "I know."

           Mulder squinted up at the speaker, a young man dressed strangely for a cadet.  Then he looked more closely.  "And who are you?  How would you know?" he asked, dread thickening his tongue.

           The boy looked straight at him and said simply:  "Because I'm Jude Hoffman."

*         *         *

           Agent Dana Scully watched her five o'clock class sidle into the room.  The gaggle of new cadets were only in their second week at Quantico, not yet inured to the unpleasant information that greeted them daily.  One man looked almost green with the very smell of the operating room, and his friend was patting him sympathetically.  Scully smirked and adjusted her white lab coat.

           "Forensic Pathology," she said,  "moves for us today out of the classroom and into the morgue.  So far I have taught you what signs to recognize, which substances to test.  Today, we proceed to how."  

I think I'm going to enjoy this, she thought, eying the green student.  I think Mulder's sick humor is contagious.  With guilty relish, she hefted the scalpel and aimed for the dotted line across the cadaver's forehead.  "It is advantageous to begin an autopsy with the removal of the cranium…" she began.  The scalpel sank into the blue tinged flesh, blood welling thickly around the knifepoint.  A memory strafed across her vision unbidden, of scalpels and razors and welling blood, of blowing grass and whispering darkness, but she pushed it away.

'Green' gagged and brought her back, and Scully returned her attention to the cadaver.  She completed the incision and lifted away the top of the skull, placing it on the body's chest.  She began to balance the scale in preparation for the brain.

"All the vital organs must be removed, weighed and examined for irregularities…"  Green looked positively distraught at the idea.  Scully was just reaching into the skull when the door flew open, crashing against the wall and panicking the students.  A cadet was standing there, panting, his chest rising frantically with the effort of breathing.

Scully's mouth tightened into a thin line, irritation pulling at her.  She glared at the intruder.  "I beg your pardon?  Do you not realize that I am in the middle of a class?  Do you have some reason for barging in here, or was entering like civilized person beyond your abilities?"  One of Scully's students chuckled.

"Sorry, Agent Scully," the runner panted.  "I'm really sorry, but Agent Mulder sent me.  He said you had to get down to Coolidge Hall right away, that it's really urgent, and I ran all the way…"

Scully sighed angrily, peeling off her gloves.  "Sure, fine.  Get back to wherever you're supposed to be, cadet.  And thank you for delivering the message."  She turned to her own cadets.  "I'll be back in a few minutes.  Don't touch anything."

Looking at their disgusted faces, Scully decided that it wasn't likely they would.

*         *         *

Scully slammed through the upper doors of Coolidge Lecture Hall, a million angry thoughts swarming through her.  She had spent the walk over debating which cutting remark to sling at him when she arrived, but they all died on her lips when she got to the bottom of the hall and got a good look at his guest.

"Jude…" she breathed.  Mulder shot her a curious look.

The sullen, black haired boy answered her with a curt nod.  "Yeah, it's me.  How are you, Dana?"

"Jude," she said again.  "What on earth are you doing here?  Does your family know where you are?"

"No," he said.  "I ran off.  But I did come here for a reason."

Scully cast an incredulous look at Mulder, who seemed thoroughly confused.  "Wait a minute," he said.  "Have the two of you been corresponding or something?"

Scully nodded faintly.  "For a few years after the case, we wrote each other briefly, every few months, but I haven't heard from you in a very long time, Jude."

The boy shrugged.  "I had stuff going on.  But I came to see you because I need help.  Ten days ago, my foster brother was kidnapped, and he hasn't been found yet.  I thought…"  His voice stumbled a bit.  "I mean, you guys managed to find me, right?  I thought maybe you could find him."

"Oh," Scully murmured.  "I don't know.  I'm sure the local agents are doing their best with the case…"

"No they're not!" Jude cried.  "They haven't done anything, and I overheard them saying that it's a lost cause, that the case is about to be dropped.  That's when I came to find you."

Mulder frowned, then turned back to the boy.  "Jude, can you excuse us for a second?"  He led Scully a little way away, and lowered his voice.  "Scully, he's a runaway, and there's really no way we can help him.  I think the kindest thing would be to alert his foster family and put him on a plane back to Salt Lake City."

Scully felt anger flare in her chest.  "He asked us for help, Mulder.  The least we can do is let him stay for a little while, and make some calls to find out what we can do.  I'm going to ask him back to the apartment."

"Scully, you can just decide that unilaterally.  I have some say…"

"You know, Mulder, I killed that boy's father.  I held that boy, still chained and bleeding, in the dark for almost twenty minutes while you tried to get through that trap door.  An experience like that creates a bond that is not easily broken, and I will not betray his trust in me."

Mulder stared at her for a few seconds more, and then nodded, almost imperceptibly.  "All right," he said finally.  "But if he changes the radio station in the car, so help me…"

Scully laughed softly and swatted his arm, then turned and walked back to the boy.  "Jude, I'd like it very much if you would come home with me, back to Agent Mulder and my apartment.  I'll make some calls there, and we'll see what we can do after that, okay?"  

The tousled black head nodded, and Mulder walked over and scooped up the ragged knapsack that sprawled at his feet.

"C'mon," he said.  "I'll let you pick the station in the car."

The new apartment in Georgetown still smelled like floor cleaner, and it gusted out at them as Mulder unlocked the door.  Scully saw Jude wrinkle his nose, and she smiled.

"It's a brand-new apartment," she said.  "You'll get used to it in a minute."

Mulder grinned.  "If not, it will give you brain damage."  

Scully rolled her eyes, and Jude smiled for the first time since he'd arrived.  "You're weird, Agent Mulder, but I can get that in a guy.  Most people think I'm weird."  He disappeared into the apartment, and Mulder beamed at Scully.

"He thinks I'm weird, Scully!  What a compliment."

She just pushed him inside.

*         *         *

Around two in the morning, Scully sat bolt upright with a gasp, covered in a sheet of sweat.  Mulder was breathing steadily beside her, his eyes twitching beneath their lids.  Scully looked around the room frantically, trying to remember the nightmare that had sent bolts of panic sweeping through her.  She remembered almost as suddenly.  It had been dark, and even in her sleep she had spasmed from the fall.  She was back in the dream, in the memory, in an instant.

_Something glittered in the dark beside one of the pillars, dark as a black pearl, like a polluted and stained diamond._

_           Eyes…_

_           A small noise of fear escaping her lips, Scully threw herself against the wall, pressing her back against it like a child, longing for it to reach out and draw her in, warm and safe and protected, curled under the covers in a cocoon of shaken innocence.  _

_           Fabric rustled._

_           Scully heard, slipping and piercing down into her dungeon of fear, a small mewling sound of pain and confusion.  Several slivers of light were cut off and changed as something more concrete began to move at the far end of the warehouse.  The sound changed to a low muffled sob, and then to a high, keening chant._

_           "I want Daddy.  The man has my Daddy.  Daddy!"  Then, long and drawn out, ripping and tearing at the fabric of the air:  "Help…"_

           Scully slipped from the bed and padded from the room, walking down the short hallway to the living room, where Judas Hoffman lay sleeping soundly on his stomach on Mulder's old leather sofa.  Scully stood above him for a long time, watching his body rise and fall from the rhythm of his breathing.  Silently and gently, she reached down and smoothed down his hair, his shining black hair.  Feeling a sudden need to see, she slipped the back of the boy's t-shirt up slightly, and right then a car passed in the street below.

           The white light of the headlights swung over the two of them, and light blinding, illuminating for a moment the silver rise and fall of the milky skin on his back.  Underneath Scully's hands were his wings, carved there three years earlier by a madman, the very beginnings of what he had perceived as his crowning glory.  George Nathaniel Hoffman had wielded his scalpel, his razor, like a paintbrush, rendering his poor choirboys fallen, bloody angels.  Scully carried her own engraving from Hoffman on her back, cris-crossing lines sliced into her skin by the killer, lashed whip thin in the darkness.

           Sickness rising in her throat, Scully lowered the t-shirt and reached up to her own back, still standing over the boy in the utter silence of the apartment.  She slid her hand over her skin, her arm twisted at an awkward angle, until her fingers collided with the smooth puckers of scar tissue that extended from her shoulders to her mid back, crossing each other and rising higher in some places than others, where the razor had cut deeper and struck bone.  Suddenly, a small voice came from the immobile form on the couch.

           "Dana, will they always be there?  I hate them so much that it scares me.  I've tried to cut them off, burn them off, anything, everything, but they never go away.  I'm not one of his angels, and I just want them gone… I just want him gone."

           "Were you awake the whole time?" Scully asked, ashamed and concerned at the same time.  When Jude didn't answer, Scully sat down on the edge of the sofa.  "I don't think they will ever go away, I'm sorry to say.  The doctors tell me mine won't."

           "You have them too?" the boy asked tentatively.  "I didn't know that.  Can I see them?"

           Automatically, Scully lifted the back of her shirt, exposing her back to the air.  Another set of passing headlights filled the apartment with white light, and Jude sucked in air when he caught sight of Scully's scars.  She lowered the fabric, and turned to face the boy.  

           "He gave them to me when I was trying to get to you, when I was in the dark.  He came up behind me and I couldn't see anything.  He was still holding the razor he'd used on-"  Scully stopped, realizing how inappropriate what she had been to say really was.

           "On me." Jude finished flatly.  "The razor he'd used on me.  I guess that makes us kinda blood brothers, doesn't it?"  For a moment he seemed just like any other twelve year old boy, eager with the promise of belonging, the eternal promise that sharing blood seems to bring, the kind of boy who would sit with his best friend in a tree house and prick their fingers by candlelight.

           "Maybe it does." Scully said softly.  As they considered the concept, the phone rang with sudden violent noise.  They both jumped hard, and Scully forgot for a moment that she was supposed to answer this startling device.  It was picked up on the second ring, though, and Scully heard Mulder's sleepy voice from the bedroom.  After a minute or two, she heard his feet coming down the hallway.  He appeared in the wide doorway, framed against the faint light from their bedside lamp that trickled from their room.

           "They want us in Salt Lake City first thing in the morning, Scully.  They want all of us there."

           "Mulder," Scully said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts.  "What's wrong?"

           Mulder ignored her and looked straight at Jude.  "They found your foster brother.  He's dead."  Jude gasped, and his eyes began to glitter.  "It's worse, I'm afraid," Mulder continued, his voice horribly flat.  "He was found naked, sprawled on his stomach, with a pair of wings carved onto his back." 

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**A/N:**  Let me know what you think, please!  Review, review, review, and thanks so much for all the feedback I've received already.

To respond to a few reviews: **BrokenHearts**, don't worry about it, no offense taken.  I didn't like 'The River' either…   **BroncosCheer**, 'Disciple' is a fanfic I wrote last winter, not an episode.  Sorry if that was unclear.  And **Niobium**, thanks very much for pointing out that mistake.  Unfortunately, I can't go back and fix it, because the timing is integral to the plot, but thanks anyway.  And since there are only two more of you, thanks for the lovely reviews, **Gillian Leigh **and **Spooky'sAngel**!

~ Ceilidh


	3. Over Omaha

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

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Over Omaha, Nebraska  
October 20  
8:13 am

The view out the window of the plane was one of endless brown plains cut with circular fields. Scully remarked absent-mindedly that they looked just like basic crop circles. Mulder just held her hand more tightly. The persistent drone of the engine filled the cabin and blocked Scully's ears, making everything seem muffled and far away, as if from underwater. Judas stared out the plexi-glass window intently, silent and unblinking, as he had since they had boarded the plane.

"Excuse me," he said suddenly, his voice thick. "I need to use the restroom." He got up and shuffled past Scully and nodded curtly to Mulder, who had to stand up to let the boy pass. Scully frowned, and looked up at the concerned face above her.

"I'm going to go after him," she said softly to Mulder. "I'm worried. He hasn't cried yet."

Mulder gazed after Jude, his brow furrowed. "Give him his space, Scully. It's… it's not easy to let anyone see you cry after something like this. I remember what it felt like, but at least he knows one way or the other."

Scully leaned over the empty aisle seat, still radiating warmth from him, and took his hand again. "I love you," she said, surprising even herself. She almost never told him that. In this case, she had meant to say 'I'm sorry' or 'I understand', but her mouth had given him the real message. He just smiled at her softly, and she got the message too.

After several more minutes, Jude came back down the aisle and slid into his window seat, not once saying a word. His eyes were raw and red, his cheeks were puffy, and his forehead was damp, the fine black hair curling slightly on his skin. Scully didn't say anything either, but she simply placed a gentle hand on his leg and then took it away.

The rest of the plane ride was silent.

- - -

The plane rumbled into the terminal in Salt Lake City at ten-forty in the morning, and the three of them stood and shuffled their way down the body of the plane, crushed between fellow passengers waiting for escape from its confines. Scully's heart was pounding, her hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly, and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear for what felt like the thousandth time.

Coming back to Salt Lake always did this to her, and she had only been back twice in the three years, almost four years, since Hoffman. That was the way she thought about it, about linear time in her life; pre-Hoffman, post-Hoffman, like A.D. and B.C. for the rest of the world. This time, though, there was some other menace out there, unspeakable danger and sickness that was just waiting to swallow her whole. It was like a shrill song on the edge of her mind, a terrifying concept with ramifications so horrible that she couldn't even mange to consider them. She had managed not to really process the information since that hideous phone call, since the sound of Mulder's padding bare feet on the hallway floor.

_Wings_, she thought, sickness beginning to churn inside her. _There were wings carved into a little boy's back, the one thing I hoped, I prayed, never to see again in this life._ With a metallic sound like a knife blade through air, a memory flew back into her mind with a terrifying ferocity. It was from the very first day of the Hoffman investigation, from a cold tent off I-15 in Provo, and it was Jamie Fredrick Holtz.

_  
  
When Mulder parted the thick flaps of the tent door, the cool air rushed out at them. The open canisters of liquid nitrogen had allowed the sheriff's department to keep the body cool enough to wait for the FBI. The cold air crept along her skin. _

_And then Scully saw the boy._

_He was propped up grotesquely, a medium sized rock under his chin to hold up his head, his arms flung wide, his legs parted slightly. He was completely naked. The most striking and disturbing feature, though, was his back._

_On it were swirls and lines, curves and loops, and they all seemed to resolve themselves into an incredibly ornate set of wings, delicately carved into his back. Suddenly in struck Scully what she was actually looking at: a small boy, maybe nine years old, with wings carved, goddamnit carved into his body. The word kept flying around her mind. Carved…_

_She felt the bile rise in her throat, choking her, stinging her, burning her throat and the back of her mouth. She breathed, slowly and carefully, in and out, knowing it would be easier if she didn't close her eyes, but desperately wanting to. She felt the impulse retreat slightly after a few moments, but it still lurked, low in her throat._

Back in the aisle of the plane, Scully sucked in a low, shuddering breath. These bouts of memory were growing more intense, more exact. It was as if she became lost in each one, just as she had been lost in the moment so ferociously when it had all happened four years ago.

She packed line of people began to move more steadily towards the exit now, and Scully heaved a grateful sigh, reaching up to collect her small carry-on bag. Wordlessly, as always, she and Mulder and Jude shuffled along and finally out of the door and into the tunnel connecting them with the arrivals gate.

"Is anyone meeting us?" Jude asked suddenly.

"Well," Mulder said hesitantly. "I'd imagine your foster parents are, and there might be someone from the regional FBI office to meet Scully and I."

The boy's thin black eyebrows came together. "You mean I'm not staying with you? But I want to."

Scully looked at him, puzzled. "Jude, don't you want to stay with your foster parents? You seemed…" He flinched at her use of the past, and she changed her words immediately. "You seem very attached to you foster brother."

"Yeah, well…" he said, and then trailed off. "They're fine, but they have a lot of other kids and are really busy, and… and… You can protect me."

Scully raised her eyebrow and pulled Jude to the side of the tunnel, ignoring the stares from the other disembarking passengers.

"Jude, why would you think that you have to be protected?" She realized that it was a ridiculous question in the silent moment before his response.

"Because the man who… killed… my foster-brother carved wings on his back. Wings! Just like my fathe- Hoffman did. And I'm the one that got away." He said the last phrase very slowly, like she was an idiot. Despite herself, Scully felt her temper rise slowly. Seeing the tension begin to show on her face, Mulder ushered them forward to the end of the tunnel, his hand hovering above the small of Scully's back.

The arrivals gate was bustling and chilly with air-conditioning, and Scully scanned the crowd for a person in uniform. To her surprise, she was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders and whirled around. Her heart leapt into her throat, her stomach twisted, and her right hand twitched towards her belt, where her holster would usually be. Before she could react for more than a second, she was swept into an embrace, and she recognized the smell of the shirt she was pressed against.

"Dan?" she exclaimed. She pulled her head back, and there, beaming down at her, was Daniel Morris, her ex-partner. "My god, Dan, it's so incredible to see you!" She hugged him swiftly again, and then stepped back to look at him. He smiled sheepishly at her.

"Do I pass muster?"

Scully looked at him carefully. The gray in his hair was more plentiful than ever, almost the dominant shade now, and his face was more lined and his stomach more rounded, but he was still the same warm, friendly, intelligent man she had known for years.

"With flying colors," she said warmly. She remembered Mulder with a start, and turned to him, but he was already exchanging a brief, manly back-thumping hug with Dan.

"Mulder," he was saying. "I hope you've been taking good care of her, because she sure is missed down here."

"I try," Mulder replied with a grin.

"And this must be Jude," Dan finished. "It's nice to see you again, son, and you probably don't even remember who I am." At the boy's headshake, he smiled. "That's all right. I wouldn't remember me if I were you."

Suddenly there was a commotion, and a frazzled looking couple burst out of the crowd and charged toward them. The woman was in the lead, her hair mussed and her expression determined. A battleship of a woman, as her father would have said. The woman marched over and swept Jude into a fierce embrace.

"Don't you ever, ever, ever do something like that again," she lectured into his hair. "Do you have any idea how worried we were? Any idea… And then we get the news about Mattie… We thought you had to be dead too, until that FBI woman called us…"

Scully coughed discreetly, irritation swelling in her throat. The woman obviously cared for him, but honestly, the boy needed room to breathe… Without warning, the image of Jamie Holtz, the ninth victim of George Hoffman, flashed into her mind, the image that had haunted her throughout the case years before_. _

_Jamie, roped and gasping for air, the chain around his throat crushing his windpipe, blood pouring from the wings on his back, tiny blue lips parted in desperation as the air was ripped from his lungs._

_Room to breathe…_

Scully immediately cursed herself for her internal choice of words. She walked forward, shaking the image from her vision, and stuck her hand out to the woman clutching Jude.

"Mrs. Holderman? I'm Agent Scully, we spoke on the phone." Mrs. Holderman reached around the squirming boy to clasp her hand limply.

"Hi, Agent Scully. Thank you so much for bringing my boy home to me, he's caused us such an agony of worry over him." _And your foster son who died,_ she thought, _are you at all agonized over him?_ But she didn't repeat it out loud.

Dan stepped forward and handed his card to Mr. Holderman. "We'll be dropping by sometime tomorrow," he said. "To interview you and Jude about Matthew. We're so sorry for your loss."

Goodbyes were said all around, but Scully moved through them like a robot. Only one thing filled her head: the name of the dead boy. Matthew. Matthew, a Disciple name. Was it all beginning again?

- - -

Scully could barely see the familiar sights through the car window. Her mind was filled with the foreboding that was gnawing at her senses, and every shadow in the city held the killer, held dark eyes, glittering like stained diamonds. Mulder, sensing her distress, took her hand gently, rubbing his thumb across the back of her knuckles with an even rhythm. He leaned closer to her and kissed her lightly on the temple, his voice soft in her ear.

"It'll be fine, Scully. You're not alone with this, not ever." With a lopsided smile, he returned her rare favor of words from the plane trip. "I love you."

Scully turned and smiled tremulously back at him. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad this time. Maybe, finally, she wasn't alone…

- - -

The massive office tower on 200 South was just as she remembered it: busy, gleaming, and drafty. With Dan leading the way, she went through security, waved to the guard, and crossed brusquely to the elevator. Every movement felt like a bizarre echo of time travel, like it was four years ago, and she'd never been assigned to the Choir case, never tracked down Hoffman, never seen a boy with his back so mangled and cut that bone showed through, never reunited with Mulder. She was still unremarkable Agent Scully, the northerner with the nice Mormon boyfriend, sensible shoes and sure hand with the scalpel, and still belonged here.

They entered the familiar gold-mirrored elevator, and Dan hit the button for the sixth floor, a floor, Scully recalled, made up entirely of small cubicles for partners to share, wood veneer desks front to front inside the plastic boxes. Sure enough, the elevator disgorged them into just such a scene.

Agents bustled back and forth, carrying bundles of paper, manila folders, data disks. The air was spilt by the periodic ringing of phones, and a healthy buzz of conversation occupied those intervals. The smells of coffee and hot plastic from the scanners constantly in use mingled in her head, and the thin gray carpet was faintly spongy beneath her feet. Her head slightly spinning, Scully realized just how much she had learned to take for granted the hushed silence that usually prevailed in the corridors and lecture theaters at Quantico.

Dan conducted them to a more secluded cubicle at the far right of the room, where two medium sized desks crouched, facing each other in the center of the boxy, pale green space. Another surprise was waiting for them there; seated at the far desk, young face alight with happiness, was Agent Alex Paring.

He jumped to his feet as they entered, and swept Mulder into a strong hug. A grin split his face as Mulder squeezed the life out of his former partner. They pulled away, and Paring grinned as well. He turned to Scully next, gripped her in his arms, and then admired them both at arm's length, turning to Dan after a moment.

"Now," he joked. "Isn't that just the prettiest couple you've ever seen?"

They all laughed, and Scully looked Paring over as he teased Mulder good-naturedly. He was definitely older than the twenty-five he'd been on the Hoffman case, but the intervening years had been good to him. His face was fuller and more jovial; he'd lost the slightly gawky look in his bones, and had filled out more, but Scully could tell that it was all muscle. His eyes, too, were livelier; when Scully had first met him, he'd been nursing an unfortunate infatuation with Mulder, but the pained, over-serious look he'd often worn was gone.

"So, Alex," Mulder was retorting. "Who's the new man, then? You've hinted in your e-mails, but never told."

"Never you mind," Paring shot back, a shy grin hovering on the corners of his mouth. "You don't know him."

They were distracted a sharp ring from the phone on Dan's desk. He scowled at the number on the display, and picked it up quickly.

"Agent Morris speaking." His frown deepened as he listened, and Scully noticed again how much older he looked in a sudden rush of compassion. "Uh huh, thanks, John. No problem. I'll be there to sign the forms in just a minute. Thanks."

The laughter in the room died instantly as he put the phone down. Dan rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "Dana, I'm afraid you're going to have a busy day tomorrow. That was John Pilings, in the lab. Matthew's body has just arrived."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**A/N:** Hey everybody! I'm really sorry that this took so long to post. I got really mixed-up, and I was convinced that I'd posted this already, and so I started working on the next chapter. But, as you all know, I hadn't posted it… Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

Please, please, please review, and thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed so far.

Ceilidh


	4. Matthew, Judas, Peter

**Title:** Canticle

****

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

****

**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Governor Inn and Suites  
Salt Lake City, Utah  
October 20, 2007  
11: 21 pm

Mulder was sitting cross-legged on the bed when Scully arrived back at their room, a bucket of ice under her arm. He was staring down at a glossy brown folder, brow furrowed behind his glasses. Sighing as she took in the scene, Scully thought wryly that she and Mulder had seen far too many manila folders in their lives, and they never held anything good. Their life was a veritable swamp of folders bearing bad news.

As she closed the door behind herself, Mulder looked up at her and smiled softly. "Hey," he said. "Dan dropped this off while you were gone. It's the Social Services file on Matthew Hughes."

She walked over to the bed and ran her hand over his hair as she leaned over his shoulder to read the file. She still thrilled a little at these small moments, so like when they had been partnered on the X-Files, and yet with all these tiny intimacies that they had never allowed themselves, full of the unspoken knowledge of their relationship.

Forcing herself to concentrate on work, Scully cast her eye onto the pages in Mulder's lap. Her attention was caught by the obligatory photograph of the victim that was paper clipped to the folder, but at her first glimpse of this photograph her heart slammed into her throat and she jumped away from Mulder like an electric shock had passed through her.

"Scully?" Mulder asked with concern sharp in his voice. "What is it?"

"That boy," she said. "That's Matthew? The victim? He can't be more than six years old."

"Six and a half, actually," he replied, and pulled off his reading glasses to see her better. "Scully? You didn't know?"

"I didn't ask," she mumbled, her wild distress still clear in the waiver in her voice. "I just assumed… If they were modeled on the… the others, that the victims would be the same age…" Horror chased nausea through her body.

He stood up and crossed over to her in a few long strides, pulling her into his arms and speaking roughly into her hair. "I'm so sorry, Scully. I had no idea you didn't know…"

She cut him off by stepping away. "It's all right, Mulder. It's not your fault."

She smiled briefly to reassure him, and then she crossed to the bathroom, scooping up her pajamas from the Mulder-unpacked pile on one of the chairs, and closing the door firmly behind her. Inside the bathroom, she threw herself against the wall and slid down to the cold tile floor, her breath coming in thick gasps. She struggled to control her body, to control the physical fear and revulsion that pounded from her heart. Memories of four years earlier pushed at her mental defenses like floodwater at a dyke near to breaking.

A sharp tap at the door and an insistent 'Scully?' startled her to her feet, and she hurriedly undressed and then pulled on her pajamas, opening the door before Mulder could even call her name again. She smiled briefly again, and then passed him, climbing into the bed.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but seemed to think better of it and went into the bathroom himself, pointedly leaving the door open. When he reemerged he was dressed for bed, and he turned out the light on his way across the room. Scully felt his warm weight settle onto the mattress, and for a moment all she could hear was the persistent hum of traffic in the street outside. Unexpectedly, her eyes prickled slightly. Then Mulder rolled towards her and stretched out his arm, pulling her close. For a small second his lips grazed her ear, and then she felt him settle into his pillow.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't have to.

- - - - At nine-thirty the next morning, Scully stood alone in the FBI Office morgue, facing a gurney that held unbelievably small lump under the sterile sheet. Scully stood with her hand poised above the sheet, unable to move the inch further needed to pull it back. Above her, the microphone hummed with silence and beside her the scalpels and retractors and bone saws stood bright and ready for use, but she could not bring herself to move. 

Unexpectedly, the door was opened with a small click, and Mulder stepped into the room, his face set and his eyes resolute. Despite the small bump in her chest at his entrance, Scully let annoyance seep into her voice.

"Mulder, what on earth are you doing here? I'm conducting an autopsy."

He tried his best to smile, and he gestured at the table. "But it hasn't even started yet. I haven't missed any of the credits, and I've brought my own popcorn."

She sighed, but in the end affection won out. "Mulder, you don't need to be here. I'm fine, and I know how much you hate autopsies..."

The fake grin fell off his face. "But I hate the thought of what this is going to do to you even more than any objection to Y-incisions. Scully, what's under that sheet is going to rule our lives for god knows how long, and I want to be here with you, to see the thing we never thought to see again come roaring back to life. I need to be here when it all begins again."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and mumbled a quiet acquiescence. He gently touched the tips of his fingers to her knuckles, and then nodded as well, settling back against the cabinets, bracing himself for the visions that would soon assault their eyes. And then Scully pulled back the sheet.

They both recoiled in horror, almost like they had been slapped. On the metal slab lay a tiny form, mangled and maimed almost beyond recognition as a human being. On his back were the crude, slashed outlines of a pair of wings; deep red gorges hacked into the sagging flesh. The wings were merely roughly triangular patches with horizontal grooves cut in for flight feathers, but the effect was shocking in its immediate brutality. As well, it was clear that the boy had been starved for the total time he had been missing, about three and a half days.

His limbs lay in a sickeningly familiar position: spread-eagled, belly down, head propped up as if on an invisible block. As with all of Hoffman's victims, rigor mortis had frozen the neck in this bizarre position, as if constantly called to attention, pricked like a dog awaiting a command. His eyes were livid red and wide open; the pupils dilated black spots awash in hemorrhaged crimson. A ringed purple and green bruise enclosed his throat, and smaller bands of broken flesh marred his wrists and ankles.

It was everything Scully had begged and prayed never to see again, the sight that haunted the deepest recesses of her mind, and as she stared at the thing on the table the memories broke the surface with a burbling gasp and sucked at her mind and her senses. They were drowning her when she felt the warm press of Mulder's body at her side, and the firm touch of his hands on her shoulders.

"Scully," he was saying. "Scully, it's me. Look at me, Scully, please."

She looked at him, and his hazel eyes were swimming with tears. They inhaled a shaking breath together, and then he kissed her gently. When he pulled back, a single tear shone on his cheek.

"We're not alone," he said, his voice hoarse. "We are together right from the beginning this time, Scully, and we will survive this."

She nodded slowly, and then with a last shuddering look into his eyes, flipped on the microphone and reached for the scalpel.

- - - -

That afternoon, Scully stood with Mulder and Alex Paring on the front step of the Holderman's house, on a quiet residential street, still trying her best to shake the tang of blood and metal from her mouth. She rang the doorbell, and listened to the faint echo of her action sound through the painted wooden door. It opened a few moments later, and Scully was surprised to see a small boy of about three years old standing behind it, a wide grin plastered on his face.

"Hello," he said cheerily. "This is my house."

A frazzled looking woman appeared a second later, running down the stairs. She swept the boy behind her for a panicked second before she recognized the agents. "Oh, it's only you," she said with obvious relief. She turned to the small child, who was now peeking out from behind her and waving. "For goodness sake, Jeremy, what have I said about answering the door when I'm not here?"

Jeremy shook his head and muttered a quiet: "Don't do it."

Mrs. Holderman exhaled with exasperation, and then turned back to the agents. "I'm sorry about that," she said, shooing Jeremy away into the house. "We're just being really careful, really watchful about the children. Please, come in."

They wiped their feet and stepped inside, Mulder introducing Paring to Mrs. Holderman while Scully took in the house. It was large, with a set of cream-carpeted stairs facing them, running directly from the entrance, with a hallway running to the back of the house beside them, leading to what she guessed was the kitchen. On either side of the entranceway were a dining room and a living room. All were tastefully but conservatively decorated, and the air tasted like sandwiches and carpet cleaner when she breathed over her tongue.

A sudden thump above them drew Scully's attention to the second floor hallway, visible where it ran parallel with the top of the stairs, and to the dark shape that was leaning over the banister.

"Hello," Jude said, his face unreadable.

"Hi," Scully answered.

"Jude?" Mrs. Holderman called up. "C'mon down, hon."

The boy pulled a face, but came downstairs, hovering at a good distance from his foster mother. At a look from her, he rolled his eyes and stuck his hand out to Mulder. "Good to see you, sir," he intoned sullenly. "Thanks for letting me stay at your house the other day."

Mulder sensibly just shook his hand back, and quietly introduced Paring. Mrs. Holderman ushered them all into the living room, on their right, and seated them on various chairs and couches, Jude slouching in the armchair next to Scully. They waited in silence for another few moments until Mr. Holderman arrived from the back of the house, wiping something off his hands. He sat down, and gazed around at the agents blankly.

Finally, Scully sat forward. "Well, I suppose the first question is: what happened on the day Matthew disappeared?"

The Holdermans glanced at each other, and then Mrs. Holderman opened her mouth slowly. "As I recall, the day started very normally. The older boys went off to school, and I was here, with Jeremy."

"Exactly how many foster children do you have?" Scully asked.

"We currently have just Jeremy and Jude, but Matthew was in the middle in terms of age. However, we do have an older boy, Cameron, who is in his first year of college right now. Oberlin. Top of the class." She pointed to a photograph on the bookshelf, of a handsome teenager in graduation robes. Scully saw Jude roll his eyes.

Paring furrowed his brow. "Mrs. Holderman, isn't it unusual to keep foster children for as long as you have?"

"Well, we only had Cameron from the age of thirteen, we've had Jude since he was nine, and Jeremy from two, but yes, it is unusual."

Mr. Holderman sat forward, seemingly to provide an explanation. "You see, we offer a rather unique environment as foster parents. Unlike most, we are willing to take children who will likely never be adopted, as in the case of all our boys at the moment." He winked at Jude, who looked slightly stricken. "Now, on the surface, that seems strange, that all these fine children would not be adopted. However, Cameron was too old, Jeremy has acute ADD, and Matthew was the son of a heroin addict. He had been through far too many homes unable to cope with his health problems for any realistic hope of adoption. And Jude… Well, you know Jude's situation."

Anger flared up in Scully, but she tried her best to tamp it down. She could understand, now, why Jude was so sullen at home. This family; they were just so godamned pleased with themselves…

"Mrs. Holderman, if you could continue to tell us about the day that Matthew disappeared?"

"Well, like I said, Jude and Matthew were at school, and when Jude came home Matthew was not with him. He said that he hadn't been able to find him and so had come home alone, but he later admitted that he had left the school without waiting for Matthew at all. They had had a fight at lunchtime, and Jude had been too angry to want to walk home with Matthew as usual."

Understanding dawning in Scully. Jude held himself responsible for Matthew's disappearance, and perhaps the Holdermans did as well. That was what had provoked the rather astounding reaction of fleeing halfway across the country with Mr. Holderman's stolen credit card. In his horrendous guilt, Jude had fled to the only people he knew who could find lost children: Agents Scully and Mulder.

Scully could see from Mulder's expression that he had come to the same conclusion, and was as horrified as she was. Jude seemed to sink further into his chair as silence pervaded the room, and Scully shook herself slightly and prompted Mrs. Holderman to continue, which she did.

"Well, we waited and waited, but Matthew didn't come home. When my husband got home at about six o'clock he drove around the neighborhood but couldn't find him. After that, I called the police. The police searched for two days before we woke up to find Jude's note. We were frantic until you called, and then the police called only an hour later to say that they'd found Matthew… They'd found his body…"

For the first time in the interview, she seemed to lose her composure, her eyes welling and gleaming. Mr. Holderman nodded gently and exhaled loudly.

"That was horrible, really horrible," he said, "having to explain that to Jeremy. He just couldn't understand why Matthew wasn't coming home anymore. And we had to deal with it ourselves, and worry about Jude…"

Paring frowned. "Mr. Holderman, Mrs. Holderman, I think I speak for all of my colleagues when I say this, but… Well, you don't seem as distressed as one would expect from a couple who has just lost a child."

The Holdermans looked at each other, and then she answered. "Well, you see, we had only had Matthew for about five months when this happened. As well, his health problems and the moving from foster home to foster home affected him very profoundly. Matthew was quite incapable of forming relationships, and that made it very difficult to properly bond with him. We even began to suspect he was autistic…"

"That's not true!" Jude shouted, throwing himself out of his chair and speaking for the first time in the interview. "He was capable of forming relationships! He loves me, and I love him, and Jeremy loves him too. The only reason he didn't want to be around you is because you didn't like him, and you treated him like shit!"

Mr. Holderman turned bright red, and stood up as well, a vein protruding from his forehead. Mulder hurriedly placed himself between them, and put a firm hand on the older man's shoulder, pushing him back into his seat.

"I think you should sit down, Mr. Holderman," Mulder said, in the quiet yet deadly voice he used very rarely. "And, Jude, you sit down too. I know you're in pain, and that you're angry, but this is not the time to say things you _don't mean_." He stressed the last two words and stared at the boy. _I believe you_, the look was saying_, but don't make this worse._ After a moment, Jude got the message and sat down, his gaze intent on Mulder.

"Right," Mulder said, resuming his own seat. "So, you suspected he was autistic…"

"But we never got a chance to have the tests done." Mrs. Holderman supplied, her voice quivering as she looked between her husband and Jude. "But, of course, there was another reason that we aren't as stricken as perhaps we should be."

"Oh?" asked Paring, dislike clear in his tone. "What would that be?"

"This isn't the first time this has happened," she said.

"What?" Scully exclaimed. "What the hell do you mean by that?"  
"I'm amazed you didn't know." Mrs. Holderman said, looking at them in confusion. "It's the reason we chose to foster Jude. In 2002, we were the foster parents of a ten year-old boy named Peter Laurence." At their blank looks she added:

"Peter Laurence, the seventh Disciple and victim of George Hoffman."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**A/N: **Sorry about the delay, yet again… To make it up to you all, another new chapter will be posted tomorrow (Monday) or on Tuesday! Please, please, please review!

Ceilidh


	5. And Simon

**Title:** Canticle

****

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

****

**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

- - - - - - - - - - - -

FBI Field Office  
Salt Lake City, Utah  
October 22, 2007  
10: 20 am

"How the hell did we miss it?" Mulder exclaimed, for the thousandth time that morning. "We lived in those files for the whole investigation. Why didn't I notice the name? Holderman isn't that common!"

Scully sighed and rubbed her forehead, pausing for a moment in rifling through the box of files. "Once again, Mulder, we all missed it somehow. It's no one's fault."

"It's my fault," Paring intoned grimly. "It says right here that I was the one to call them in 2003 to notify them of Hoffman's capture. For god's sake, I've actually talked to them before."

Dan looked up from his folder and rubbed his eyes. "No, it's my fault," he said. "I've been on this investigation longer than you all have. I should have noticed before now."

"Will you all just be quiet?" Scully cried. "It's no one's fault! Just look through your files."

It was the day after their interview with the Holdermans, and they had been amassing materials on them ever since. The Salt Lake Field Office was, however, in the middle of a technological crisis and the archives were down, so they had to collect information the old fashioned way.

The file storage room had been raided and they were now sequestered in the basement office that had been their headquarters four years earlier. A crime scene photograph of Matthew marked the start of the victim timeline on the far wall, and they had ripped off the plastic sheeting that had covered everything in the tiny office, sneezing and coughing from the accumulated dust. They were now seated around the room, boxes and folders scattered around them.

"Here we go," Paring said. "Okay, they've been married since 1983…"

"We knew that already," Dan said heavily.

Alex ignored him. "They've had almost twenty foster children since '86, almost all of whom they kept until legal emancipation, at twenty-one. They've never had a major problem with social services, but did indeed have one foster child die under their care, but they were completely blameless. That's all this says. It's just a basic inventory report filed by Salt Lake County in 2003. Anyone else got anything better?"

"We knew all of that before," Mulder said from his perch on the desk. "All I've got from this pile of… let's see… twenty-six IRS documents, is that they always pay their taxes. Every year, for the twenty-six years since they both turned eighteen, every foster child deducted properly, every receipt accounted for. They've been audited once, when they received their first foster child. Everything was in order then, just as everything is in perfect order now. These people are perfect."

"Except that two small boys have been murdered in their care," Scully said grimly. "That's too much to be a coincidence."

"You know I don't believe in coincidence, Scully," Mulder said automatically. "There's always a reason."

"But, Dana," Dan said. "You're not suggesting that Hoffman wasn't the one who murdered those boys…"

"No!" she replied forcefully. "Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's just too much for there not to be a connection…"

Mulder sat up straighter. "Okay, so we know the killer idolizes Hoffman's crimes," he said rapidly. "What if he targeted Matthew not only because of the name, but because of his family."

Scully frowned. "But who on earth would know who Peter Laurence's family was? How would they track them down? There was a publication ban on the names ordered by the first Agent in Charge, remember?"

"If he's devoted to all things Hoffman, he'd find a way," Mulder responded. "Somehow he'd find a way."

- - - -

_The night air was chill and sharp on his face as he stepped out into the parking lot. The stars shone above him like tiny diamond-hard droplets of ice, burning with cold fury millions and millions of miles away. That was the way he had always seen the stars, cold and angry and remote; where others saw wishes or guardians, guides and angels, he saw judgment light the heavens. They were always judging him, and he was always convicted._

_ The only warm spot in all of the determining night was the plastic container in his pocket, rescued from the ceiling of his room. He was finding it harder and harder to go anywhere without it, without its warm presence and sickening thrill. Tonight he was going to the library, and on this particular trip, it had seemed impossible to leave it behind._

_ He walked through the parking lot and down the hard concrete sidewalk, the desert night crisp and cold in his nostrils. The library was still open, its hours extended because of the clientele, and he slipped inside with a gust of warm air, making his way through long practice to the back end of the resource room, where the ancient microfiche machines still stood._

_ He seated himself in front of one, starting the power, entering the search, and whirring through the negatives of the articles that he craved._

_ 'UTAH KILLER'S DEN OF HORRORS!' screamed one headline, and he settled back to read the familiar and yet frantically exciting text. In his pocket, the warm red matter swirling in the plastic container seared its deadly, moist heat into his skin._

- - - -

Scully woke up the next morning, Saturday morning, to an empty hotel room and a flashing red light on the hotel room phone. Pushing her hair back from her face, Scully patted the bedside table, located her glasses, and wearily climbed out of bed. She wandered around the room for a moment, looking for Mulder, and then finally found him on the overhung walkway outside, looking down over the parking lot below.

"Hey," she said softly, moving to sit down on the chair beside him. He put up his hand to stop her, and squinted up at her in the morning sun.

"There's a rather singular invitation waiting on the answering machine," he said flatly. "You should go listen to it before getting comfortable out here."

Her stomach suddenly uneasy, Scully searched his face for further information, but finding none, she turned and went back into their room. She scooped up the phone and hit the voice mail button. After a pause, a hesitant voice drifted out.

"Hi, Dana…"

Her heart stopped. Her body was thrown into a cold panic, and the rest of the message drifted past unheard as she tried to calm herself. That voice… It had been so long, but she'd know it anywhere. For two years she'd lived for the unique happiness that voice could bring.

Rob.

Realizing that with a flush that the message had finished, she hit replay and listened again, trying desperately to stay focused.

"Hi, Dana," it said. "I was just calling to say hi… Last night I saw on the news that you're in town on this case, and… I was just, y'know, wondering…" There was a heavy pause. "All right, this fake casual bit isn't working," the message continued. "This is me, and I'm talking to you, and that's certainly not casual. The point is, I wanted to know if you and… Mulder… wanted to meet Jenna and I for breakfast this morning. We're going to be at the Spring Lake Road Pancake House from about eight to ten. It's really close to your hotel, so stop by if you want to. All right… Bye."

Scully hung up the phone with shaking hands, and glanced at the clock. 7:52 am. They had time.

She slipped into the bathroom and got dressed quickly, a simple blouse and jeans, fitted her contacts, and brushed her teeth and hair. She let herself out of the bathroom, and glanced at the clock again. 8:01. She walked out of the room, and sat down next to Mulder, who was still staring off sightlessly.

"Did you listen to the whole thing?" she asked.

"Yes," he said tonelessly. "Are we going?"

"I don't know," she replied. "I suppose that depends on you, Mulder."

"I'm not sure about that, Scully. I didn't sleep with him for two years; you did."

She slammed her hand down on the arm of the chair and stood up fast, turning to face him. "For god's sake, Mulder," she exclaimed. "That is so unnecessary. Please just say what you want without becoming completely passive-aggressive and defensive."

He bent his head, and when he looked up again his expression was chagrined. He reached up a hand and put it on her hip, pulling her down towards him. She resisted out of principle at first, but quickly relented and allowed herself to be settled in his lap.

"I'm sorry," Mulder murmured into her hair, his voice scratchy from sleep. "I am. I know I'm an asshole about it, Scully, and I have no right to be."

She kissed his forehead and laughed low in her throat. "You are an asshole, Mulder, but of the absolute best kind."

He spoke again, and this time his voice was thick from restrained emotion. "He calls you Dana," Mulder muttered. "I don't know why, but that bothers me more than anything. It's idiotic, I know."

She smiled. "At any time, Mulder, I would rather hear you say 'Scully' in that perfect way you do, than hear any stranger who can read my name call me 'Dana'."

- - - -

Less than fifteen minutes later, Mulder and Scully walked into the Spring Lake Road Pancake House, and with a small bump of nervousness Scully recognized Rob in one of the far booths. She set off towards it, Mulder a step behind her, and as she got closer Rob looked up and spotted her. In a second he was standing and clasping her in warm hug. To her surprise she responded and hugged him back. It wasn't as strange as she'd thought.

Rob shook Mulder's hand as well, and he smiled around at both of them. "It's wonderful to see you," he said, grinning and gesturing to the brunette woman in the booth. "I'd like you both to meet my wife, Jenna. Dana, you've met her once before, right?"

"That's right," she said, with all the warmth she could muster. Two years ago, she'd been invited to Rob's wedding, but had delayed coming until after the event itself. When Scully had finally met the woman a year and a half ago, she had found her vapid and boring, with no discernable ambition of any kind, except to be a housewife and have an excessive number of children. It had been disappointing; she'd thought better of Rob. That had been the last time she'd come to Salt Lake City.

"And this," Rob said, leaning down into the booth. "Is my daughter Sarah."

Scully felt a brief pang. Never did she feel her own inability to conceive more painfully than when she was confronted with her friends' children, especially their daughters. Before her internal sight there always rose the specter of the tiny three year-old that she had barely known. Emily.

Nevertheless, Scully put on a broad smile and reached out to touch the baby's arm. "Hello, Sarah," she said. Mulder touched the small of her back lightly, with sympathy.

Rob gestured them into the booth, and they slid along the vinyl bench until they were directly across from the other couple.

"So…" Rob began, and then trailed off.

"So, how have you been?" Scully attempted.

"Oh, we've been great," Rob said with forced cheer, turning to lock eyes with his wife. "The family's been great too. Lots of new neices and nephews, and the old ones are doing well. And can you believe it? Tyler's started High School this year. He's fourteen."

Scully actually couldn't believe it for a moment. It seemed impossible that the cheerful, miscievious little boy she'd known could possibly be that old, that he could be a teenager. She could remember him pulling faces when Rob would kiss her, protesting her lack of devotion to baseball… _It was strange_, she thought, _how one day you could be an integral part of someone's life, could be there for them and watch them grow, and have them matter to you and you to them, and the next day you're gone and out of their life forever._

"That's incredible," she said finally. "He's still so young in my mind."

There was a long, awkward pause, and then Rob said: "I'm actually spending more of my time with my younger nephew, Thomas. He's a great kid; I'd love for the two of you to meet him. Maybe you'd come to one of his ball games with me and Tyler sometime before you go back to Washington."

"Um," Scully murmured, glancing over at Mulder, "That would be great, sometime."

Silence settled over the table.

Thankfully, midway through the coffee, which Jenna had refused ("No thank you, it just _poisons_ the breast milk."), Scully's cell phone rang shrilly. She excused herself from the table, and stepped outside the diner, Mulder's worried eyes following her.

"Dana Scully," she said as she flipped open the phone.

"Dana? It's Dan."

Fear flashed through her. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Now, we're not sure if it means anything yet, but Agent Mills from the office just called me at home. He said that they've just received a missing person's report from the southeastern area of the state, from the San Juan County Sheriff's Department. A family in a town called Aneth near the Arizona state line has reported their seven year-old son missing. Their son's name is Simon."

A passage forever seared on her memory flashed suddenly into her mind:

And He appointed the twelve and laid the name Peter… and James son of Alpaheus and Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot…

Scully's heart was pounding. "I'll come into the office right away. Are we going to Aneth?"

"As soon as possible. Alex and I will stay here to work on the patterns involved, try to find a way to determine where he's keeping the boy, if it is our guy. I'll meet you and Mulder downtown in twenty minutes to go over the missing person's report."

"All right. See you soon."

"Bye."

Scully snapped the cell phone shut and charged back into the restaurant. "Mulder," she called from the doorway as she marched down the aisle. "We've got to go right now. She grabbed her purse from the bench and turned to Rob and Jenna briefly. "Thank you for inviting us to join you. Congratulations on Sarah. I'll stay in touch, Rob." Then she turned on her heel and back out into the parking lot, Mulder close behind her.

"What is it?" he asked as he slid into the driver's seat of their rental car. "What's going on?"

"A missing seven year-old boy," she replied. "With a Disciple name."

The car screeched out of the parking lot and into the shattered peace of the morning streets.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**A/N:** And here's your almost instantaneous update! I think this is the fastest I've ever done it… Please reward me by reviewing. Please?

Ceilidh


	6. Bleeding Out

**Title:** Canticle  
  
**Author:** CeilidhO  
  
**Summary and Disclaimer:** Please see previous chapters.

****_- - - _

_The rain hammered down on the dusty ground, filling the air with noise and the thick smell of wet dirt. The air was so full of rain that it seemed a continuous sheet of water, falling from the sky to wash away the earth. It swelled the banks of the tiny river until it began to lick hungrily at the sides of the narrow stone bridge that straddled it, a crumbling remnant of the greater glory days of the southwest._

_ Inside the hollowed out base of the bridge, a tiny figure whimpered at the rising water. Thin rivulets of water batted at its toes where it crouched, trickling into the stinking den that was rapidly becoming a horrible trap. The heavy manacles binding its ankles and wrists bit into the soft skin, raising thick red weals that oozed every time it moved._

_ In the darkness across the narrow river, crouched beside the opposite base of the bridge, he waited and watched. He laughed at the sounds of distress that echoed from the den, barely audible against the hammer and pound of the water that fell and rose all around the stone shelter. Deciding, he carefully slid the square of plywood at his side into the swelling water and climbed on it, shoving off and reaching the other side after a few hard strokes of his powerful hands. Darkness cloaking his movements, he slipped into the hollow towards the figure._

_ The whimpers suddenly escalated into full-throated screams, threading through the air and joining the howling fury of the weather in perfect compliment._

- - -

Highway 191  
San Juan County, Utah  
October 23, 2007  
7: 42 pm

The windshield wipers swept ineffectually at the heavy sheets of rain that battered the car and made the highway slick and nearly impassable. Mulder squinted out at the road, sighing loudly, and Scully leaned her head against the window. She could feel the enormous raindrops slam into the glass pane, falling down the sheer surface in thick trails of cold.

They had only been out of the diner for a few minutes when the first drops of rain had begun to fall, tiny pinpricks of moisture easily batted aside by the windshield wipers. However, soon the rain had begun to fall in fat drops that burst and spread on impact, and finally it became massive sheets of water that showed no signs of easing. Even in the substantial climate shift between Salt Lake City and the southeastern corner of the state, the weather was the same, and the trip down was taking them hours longer than it should have.

Mulder looked over at Scully and shrugged. "We're going to have to give up, Scully. The car's sliding all over the road. It's not safe."

"Where are you suggesting we turn off?"

"There was a motel about ten miles back, just outside of Monticello."

Scully nodded, and Mulder slowed the car almost to a halt, then pulled it around in a tight turn, and finally accelerated slowly as they headed back north. They drove for almost ten minutes in silence, until the headlights flashed across a bedraggled sign reading 'Welcome to Monticello: Gateway to the Southeast'. As Scully watched, the headlights lit something else.

"Mulder!" she said quickly. "Pull over."

He swung the car onto the shoulder, and Scully grabbed her light coat from the backseat and threw open the door. She walked back a few feet, until the object caught her attention again. It was a tall stone angel, a sculpture carrying something in its arms, and at its feet was a faint plaque that Scully could not read in the near blackness. Shivering from the torrents of water streaming over her body, Scully jogged back to the car.

"Come here, Mulder, and bring the flashlight."

He was already halfway out the car when he'd seen her coming; he grabbed the wide-beam flashlight from the glove compartment and followed at a run. She was crouching at the foot of the sculpture, squinting at the metal plate. He turned on the flashlight and handed it to her, crouching down as well. She cast the white light over it.

"In loving memory," she read at a half yell over the noise of the weather. "Of our baby boy, John Ephram Redmond, brutally taken from us by the force of an evil man. Here he shall lie for the rest of the days of the world, here where his earthly body was found. Angels bore him away from the darkness, and they will cradle him until we can hold our son again in Paradise. March 3, 1992 – April 27, 2001."

They were silent for a long time, until Mulder finally said: "John Ephram Redmond. Hoffman's fourth."

Scully shone the flashlight up the stone folds of the angel's robes. In the massive stone arms lay the sculpted figure of a small boy, cradled against the vast chest. The child's eyes were closed, as if in sleep, and the angel cast its gentle gaze lovingly upon them, cherishing its tiny burden for the all the ages.

- - -

Coolidge Motor Lodge  
Monticello, Utah  
10: 21 pm

Scully stepped back into the bedroom from the steamy heat of the shower, toweling her hair rapidly. Mulder was reclined on the bed, remote in hand, but his eyes were fixed on something far away. She finished with her hair and pulled on one of Mulder's oversized t-shirts, crossing to the firm bed in a few steps. Mulder turned off the TV with a snap of white noise, and as soon as Scully was settled he flicked off the lamp.

She stared into the darkness for a moment, and then murmured quietly: "It seems unfair that one man should be insane, and that that should be allowed to irrevocably damage so many other lives, beyond any reasonable hope of repair."

"That's the nature of the world," Mulder replied softly. "People get damaged. There's only so much you can do about it."

"Maybe it's like surgery, what we do. It's what the professors taught us in medical school: if there's a hemorrhage, just do your best to clog the source. There is nothing you can do about the damage that has already been incurred. That's not your problem."

"They're probably right, Scully."

"But it seems that all we've been doing here is cleaning up the damage, the fallout, from one man's insanity. We clogged the source, but the tissue is still dying; the damage has become our problem. And we keep encountering it too; everywhere we cut into the body, the blood is still oozing, people are still bleeding damage from George Hoffman's inconceivable actions: Jude, the Holdermans, the devastated parents who put up that statue, the families of all the victims, even the killer.

"It makes me wonder, Mulder, if it's like this after every case. Every time, we think we've solved the case, closed the book, but we've really left behind a trail of broken and damaged people. Who is cleaning them up? Should we really be so surprised that one of them is striking back in such a horrific way as our killer? Whatever contact he had with Hoffman has left him so bleeding that he has found his only bandage in the butchering of those weaker than himself."

Mulder was completely silent. The rain slammed down on the roof above their heads. The morning came much too soon.

- - -

Brigham Residence  
Aneth, San Juan County  
October 24  
10:19 am

Mrs. Elizabeth Brigham had only just sat Mulder and Scully down at the cluttered coffee table and apologized for the state of the house when Mulder's cell phone rang abruptly. He got up to answer it, and Scully was left alone with the specter of a woman who sat before her.

Elizabeth Brigham was petite and pretty in a bird-like way. It could easily be seen that her natural disposition was to 'Good Housekeeping' magazines and discreet hair products, to pastel sweaters and intense normality, and her current surroundings jarred painfully with that image. Her hair was greasy and lank, and her makeup easily two days old on her face. Her sweater was stained and her eyes were dull and full of naked dismay.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air from the two Sheriff's deputies who were camped out in the kitchen, lounging beside the wiretap, tape recorder and tracer that were all plugged into the Brigham's' only phone. They seemed coarsely oblivious to the suffering of the small woman who was shaking before Scully. Scully got up and closed the connecting door to the kitchen.

"Mrs. Brigham, tell me about the day your son went missing."

The woman sent out a trembling breath. "He got on the school bus at eight-thirty on Friday morning. He was supposed to go to a friend's house after school, his friend Theo, but he never came home. I assumed that he'd stayed for dinner, and then I assumed he'd stayed for a movie or something afterwards; Simon isn't very good at calling to tell us plans. I tried his friend's house at about nine to tell Simon to come home, but there was no answer. I supposed they were out for dinner. I didn't really get worried until eleven o'clock, when I was just calling over there to ask Simon if he was planning to stay overnight, when the phone rang here."

Scully interrupted for a moment. "Mrs. Brigham, can I get the address of this friend's house, and the telephone number?"

"Of course," Mrs. Brigham said exhaustedly. She wrote on a scrap of paper lying on the coffee table, handed it to Scully, and then continued weakly. "So, the phone rang here, and it was Theo's mother Pamela. She said she was sorry that Simon couldn't spend the afternoon with them like we'd planned, and then she asked if he was sick. I panicked, and I asked to speak to Theo."

"What did Theo say?"

"He said that Simon had never met him after school. They're in different classes, so he figured that Simon had gotten sick and had gone home early."

Right then, Mulder barreled back into the room. "Mrs. Brigham," he asked urgently. "Have you participated in anything recently that might have gotten your family media attention, an appearance on TV, something like that?"

"Yes," she replied bemusedly. "We're very active in the community."

"Would it be in any way connected with the serial killer George Hoffman? The Choirmaster?"

"Yes it was," she replied again, looking nervously at Mulder. "We contributed a large sum of money to the creation of that lovely statue in Monticello, for that poor Redmond boy."

"Why?" Mulder demanded.

"It was a good cause. As well, we knew the family."

"What was the occasion for the media to be there?"

"The unveiling of the statue."

"You were on the news? Your family was interviewed?"

"Yes."

"All of you, even Simon?"

Scully glared at Mulder. His tone was badgering, even accusatory. "Mulder…" she hissed, but he ignored her.

"Yes," Mrs. Brigham said. "All of us."

Mulder seemed to be thinking intently. "Does Simon have an older brother?"

"Yes, Michael."

"How much older? Eight years?"

"Yes, exactly."

Mulder stood up quickly. "Thank you, Mrs. Brigham, you've been beyond helpful. We'll be in touch."

He ushered Scully out of the door and into the car, but she balked as she stepped off the porch. "Mulder, what the hell are you playing at? We hadn't nearly finished the interview. There were dozens of standard questions I still had to ask, dozens of facts I had to check… What's going on?"

He glanced around at the interested deputies on the porch, and answered in a low, urgent voice. "Scully, please just get in the car. I'll explain as we drive."

"No, Mulder, I won't. You've violated vital procedure, and want to know why right now, so I can go back in there and finish the interview."

"Scully, that was Alex Paring on the phone. He's had a major breakthrough on the profile, and I want to go through it with you now, because it could help us save Simon Brigham's life right now."

She sighed and climbed into the car. He was right behind her, and started the car quickly, leaving the disappointed deputies in a cloud of desert dust.

He began right away. "Paring has expanded on our previous working theory that the murders would be connected because of the wings and the Disciple names, that the new victims would all be members of families of former Hoffman victims. It was the best we could do with only one murder. But with Simon, there was no way that he was a member of a family of a Hoffman victim. However, the key element is still the families.

"Now, our guy is very different from George Hoffman in many ways. Right from the beginning, this murder had a very different feeling behind it than Hoffman's'. This killer is much younger, for one."

"Why would you say that?"

"He lacks the sophistication and restraint that was Hoffman's trademark right up until the end. It was only on the last few days, the days we were directly involved, that Hoffman got sloppy and careless. This guy has killed only five or six days ago, and he's already kidnapped another boy. He's anxious and overexcited; he's attracting too much attention.

"As well, he's killing vastly younger boys. Kidnapping a nine year-old and kidnapping a six-year old are markedly different tasks. To catch an older child, you need verbal, coercive and communication skills that our guy just doesn't possess. He doesn't talk them into it, he grabs them out of a schoolyard. Now that needs some strength, but grabbing a nine year-old needs much more. This killer is picking children more in his own strength range. These factors all seem to suggest that the killer is actually quite young. He's very young, and his psychological pathology seems to suggest he is someone who has been very damaged by Hoffman's murders."

Scully stared at him for a moment. "Mulder, you can't be proposing who I think you are as an actual, viable suspect."

Mulder didn't meet her eyes, just gazed out at the road and the bruised gray and violet sky. "We can't count him out, Scully. Jude fits the profile."

"I can't believe it," she spat. "He's twelve years old, for god's sake."

"Well," Mulder continued, "The main point is that he makes the grabs from the schoolyard, right? If no one noticed Simon and Matthew getting picked up by an older person, he's got to be young enough to pass as an older brother: in Matthew's case, as Jude or Cameron, in Simon's as Michael. And the family has to be connected somehow to Hoffman's victims. So, logically, he's got to find out about them somehow; the media is the easiest place."

"Where are you headed with this, Mulder?" Scully snapped.

"So Alex and I had this hunch, so we checked, and sure enough Simon has an older brother, an older brother who went to school with John Redmond in Monticello. With the age of the killer established between us, it's pretty obvious that he can't kidnap the fifteen year-old brother, but then he sees the family on TV, and notices Simon, who's the perfect age and has a Disciple name. And that's how it happened."

Scully frowned, and thought for a moment. "But how does it help us find the killer? Anyone can turn on the TV, or read about it in the paper."

"I was thinking about what you said last night, Scully, about how there are so many more victims than just the ones who are murdered. Who would be damaged enough by Hoffman to be driven to murder? And then I remembered something from the press conferences after Hoffman's death was announced. I remembered one of the family members of one of the boys saying that she was sorry she couldn't have been there to watch him die."

"Mulder, of course," Scully exclaimed. "Who is it who always demands the death penalty in courts? Who is it that attacks the defendants outside trials, gives press conferences demanding revenge? The families…"

"That was my thought exactly, and Alex agrees with me. The investigation is changing tack; we're going to visit each of the twelve families. The County Sheriff's department is itching to take over here anyway; we'll let them handle the routine stuff for now."

"Where are we going first?" asked Scully, freshly alive with energy.

"We're doing most of the out of state ones," Mulder replied, speeding up the car. "Philip McKenzie, Thomas Kent, James Mortimer, Simon Keene and Jamie Holtz."

Jamie Holtz. He had been the first victim Scully had worked on four years ago. He was the most vivid in her mind, the most intense. She had met his family and friends; she had felt like she had known him intimately. She had never told Mulder, but she always marked his birthday in her mind, his and Jude's. Jude. For her, it was impossible that he could be the killer. Impossible…

As the car sped north along the highway, Scully watched the sky grow darker. The bruised purple clouds swept through the sky, mingling together and gradually blotting out the light. The first few tiny drops collided with the windshield.

Mulder grinned, in high spirits from his breakthrough. "I thought this was the desert, Scully. What's with all the rain?"

"It's October," she flung back absently. "Nearly November. This is when we start to get rain, but not usually this far south this early. It's actually very unsafe; the ground is still too hard and can't absorb the water yet. There are flash floods around this time of year."

The sky continued to darken, and it appeared closer to five o'clock than noon. They flashed past the Blanding town limits, and Mulder talked to Paring on his cell phone for almost half an hour. The rain kept getting thicker and larger, and small tongues of lightning jumped between cloud fronts. The air outside was cold against Scully's cheek on the windowpane, and the highway rolled out in front of them.

Scully had just gotten out the file on Simon Brigham to check over some details when the thunder began, echoing on her ears and rolling across the broad land all around them.

"We're almost at the motel," Mulder assured her casually. "We'll stop there and check out, then continue on north. Maybe we'll sleep in Idaho somewhere."

The air was dusky and thick, and they slipped past the Monticello limits sign. A fork of lightning lit the sky, very close by. As Scully looked out the window at the exact moment of the flash, her heart stopped. Something was very wrong.

"Pull over right now, Mulder," she cried. "Get the flashlight and get out of the car."

For the second time in as many days, the car bumped up onto the shoulder and crunched through the gravel covering it. Scully was out of the car in a bound, the wind whipping her hair around her eyes and throwing raindrops down her collar. She grabbed the flashlight from Mulder, but the next bolt of lightning removed the need.

Stark white and red, naked and slashed, a body lay face down in the arms of the great stone angel.

Cradled in the solid arms, pressed to the sculpted chest, raised over the contours of the stone child beneath it, lay the mutilated body of Simon Brigham.

- - - - - - - - -  
**A/N**: Please review, as always! Thanks especially this chapter to **thefreakyone**, who gave me more feedback on this story and on "Disciple" than I could ever have hoped for.

Thanks to everybody for sticking with this story as it chugs its way along,

Ceilidh


	7. Montana Revisited

**Title:** Canticle  
  
**Author:** CeilidhO  
  
**Summary and Disclaimer:** Please see previous chapters.

****_- - - _

County Sheriff's Department  
Monticello, San Juan County  
October 25  
7:12 am

"Death was due to strangulation, from what was likely a metal chain cinched around the neck. The time of death was approximately five hours before the discovery of the body, making it mid-morning on October 24, roughly three days after the initial abduction."

The County Coroner and the Sheriff nodded, and Scully closed the folder with a decisive wave of her hand. In reality, she was shaking with exhaustion and nausea. The hours after their discovery of Simon Brigham's body in the arms of John Redmond's stone angel had been filled with a whirl of rain and lights and cars, morgues and interviews and hysterical mothers. Her autopsy had taken place in the early hours of the morning, in the gray hours between four and six o'clock, and then she had squinted in front of a blue-lit computer screen and typed up a brusque report. Her mouth felt stale and cold and her eyes burned with dryness every time she blinked.

Scully let herself out of the office and into the early morning quiet of the Sheriff's Department, threading her way between desks and humming copy machines to the heavy glass door, which swung open under her hand and let in a puff of soft desert air, gentle with the remnants of the previous days' rain. The sun was still mostly silver as it hovered on the horizon, swathed in a gauze of pearlescent cloud, and the rocky landscape that stretched away around her seemed full of soft blue and purple tones.

Most welcome of all, Mulder stood beside the rental car in the empty parking lot, one hand on the silver hood, the other running absently through his hair. His eyes were creased as he stared into the distance, and his tie hung loose and lopsided on his chest, forgotten and limp.

"Hey," she said softly. He turned instantly, and a brief smile flitted across his features.

"Hey," he answered. "Are you ready to get back on that highway?"

"Always," she said, and stepped out into the fresh air and across the cool gravel surface. "Let's keep working."

- - -

When Scully's gritty eyes finally slid shut against the blur of the lightening desert, they opened again in the massive Catholic cathedral in San Diego, her favorite childhood church. She knew she was dreaming, but she didn't care; the architecture of the rafters was too beautiful, too entrancing.

"You came," a light voice said unexpectedly. "I've been waiting so long. Where were you?"

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I had to find you first."

Jude stepped out of the shadows by the confessional, coming to stand close by. "I hurt so much. Will I ever heal?"

Scully put her hand to his back, and it came away soaked in thick, dark blood. "You have to make a choice," she said firmly. "Who would you rather be? Saint Jude, finder of lost things; or Judas Iscariot, betrayer of all, betrayer of the world. Whose blood is really on my hands?"

Jude reached out in the drifting, lethargic manner of dreams, and touched his fingertips to the blood. With equally aimless determination, he touched his crimson soaked fingers to his pink tongue, and smiled a slow, secret smile.

- - -

Scully woke in the car with a gasp, instantly taking in the change of scenery. They were in a parking lot, the rocks of the desert just a smudge on the horizon, surrounded on all sides by asphalt and cars and metal buildings that glinted in the early morning sun. Mulder was shaking her shoulder gently.

"How long was I asleep?" she asked thickly.

Mulder glanced over, his eyes veiled behind smoked lenses. "Not long. We're at the County Airfield. AD Chilton has arranged a plane to take us to Montana."

She nodded groggily, and undoing her seatbelt, slipped out of the car. The morning sun had burned away some of the earlier haze, but the air was still soft against her skin as she closed the car door and set off across the parking lot. Mulder wasn't far behind her, and they only had to walk for a few minutes before they were on the tarmac and being hailed by a man in a reflecting vest.

"Agents Scully and Mulder? The plane's ready to go; the pilot's just waiting for you. Get yourselves on board." He pointed to the small bush plane just behind the hanger building. Just as they looked over, the engine choked and sputtered into life. Mulder smiled at Scully and clutched his briefcase before jogging toward the plane. She followed close behind him.

Inside, the plane had only two rows of seats, one for the pilots and one for the passengers. The air was close and humid, and the metal of the cabin reverberated with every revolution of the engine, deafening with grumbles and roars and clangs. When they'd strapped themselves in, the pilot gave thumbs up to the man on the tarmac, and the aircraft lumbered forward, finally lurching into the sky perilously close to the edge of the paved runway. The dun colored ground receded quickly below them, and out of the corner of her eye Scully saw Mulder settle into one of the numerous case files that he always carried. She watched the ground strip away beneath their rapid progress.

Gradually, the rocky flats gave way to low hills and plunging canyons, and then the low hills gave way to sharper hills, tinged dusky green from the grasses and shrubs that littered their surfaces. Finally the Green River flashed by in a cordon of silver, like a trail of mercury across the face of the world, and the hils became rounded mountains, dark with pine around their feet, shimmering white with snow at the tops, folding away into the horizon like lumps under a coverlet.

The plane buzzed over the Uintas, and far away to the west Scully thought shee could faintly see the flash and dazzle of the Salt Lake City office towers. As the next two hours passed in a haze, they followed the mountains north, flying beside them when they got too high, over them when they calmed into broad valleys in central Idaho, where Scully finally slept.

They landed in Butte in the early afternoon, and the air was chill around their ears as they walked to the rental car and set off back down I-15.

"Who's first?" Mulder asked.

"The family of James Mortimer, in Dillon. James was killed in March 1998. He was nine years old, and was the second victim." Scully glanced over the case file she'd pulled into her lap. Over the course of the long night the Salt Lake office had faxed copies of the case files on each of the victims they were charged with investigating. "Two siblings, a brother and a sister. The brother is twenty-four, and the sister is twenty. They both live near the parents, and agreed over the phone with Chilton's office to be there for the interview."

"The brother's the right age," Mulder observed.

"I'd say he's a little old, and rather remote. The killer had to get Simon Brigham's body to the statue in Monticello within five hours of death. I don't think it could be managed from here. As well, all of the victims lived in Utah. Why would he kill only so far from home? Hoffman killed as far away as here, but also right in his own backyard, so to speak. He just doesn't seem likely to me, Mulder."

Mulder shrugged. "We've just got to eliminate them, one family at a time."

Scully sighed. "One at a time."

_- - - _

_ It was the waiting that ate at his mind. It burned away at his body like acid, like poison, like he'd broken open a battery and poured the sick yellow fluid into his eye sockets. He jumped at small noises, he clawed at his own skin in the dead of night, ripping it off in hidden places, pale strips collecting under his fingernails. He'd always done that; it couldn't be helped. _

_ Waiting felt like insects under his skin, like in the movies when scarab beetles burrowed under its surface in lumps of wriggling computer graphic. Everyone else always laughed and said 'cheesy' in that derisive way they always sounded, but he alone knew that the movie men had it right. He knew the feeling they were grasping for at their computer stations. He wondered how they knew. Did they do the dark things he did? Did they know the warm metal pleasure, the softness and the screaming release that exploded his senses and made him claw at his body the more, claw at the yielding warmth helpless beneath his hands?_

_ Alone in his room, he had always felt the maddening itch and drive. No amount of reading or looking or learning or touching could satisfy the dark twists he found his mind reeling through, but he tried all the same. The feeling had never subsided, not until he first gave in and slashed at the yielding flesh of another being. But it always returned, like a foaming beast on his back, hissing and snarling and ripping and tearing at him until he almost screamed from the agony of waiting even just one howling second longer._

_ The Beast, he decided. The perfect name for this most animal of sensations. As he gave in to another spasm of ripping agony and tore at his skin in desperation, he knew he couldn't hold out much longer. It would have to be soon, or he would explode or implode or flay himself into a thousand dripping pieces._

_ Soon…_

- - - Mortimer Residence  
46 Hilton Road  
Dillon, Montana  
3: 01 pm 

Mrs. Mortimer answered the door on the first ring, a simply dressed small town woman. Scully liked her instantly. There was something about the woman's small but collected carriage, an economy of structure, that seemed very much like her own mother.

"Mrs. Mortimer?" she said, as soon as the door was opened. "I'm Agent Dana Scully, and this is my partner Agent Fox Mulder. Our supervisor's office spoke to you on the phone?"

"Of course," she replied, "Come in, please."

They followed her into the open plan bungalow, and entered the living room across the floor of plush cream carpet. On the couch were a young man and woman, who stood as they came in.

"I'm Ed Mortimer," the young man said. "And this is my sister, Jane." He extended his hand to the agents, who shook it, and then that of his sister. When offered, Scully and Mulder took seats on the facing couch.

"First of all," Scully began, "I'm very sorry that we've come here today to bring up such a painful part of the past. I would- we would- much rather be here discussing anything else."

"However," Mulder added, "the fact remains that we are charged with an unpleasant investigation that requires us to dredge up the past. First, I'd like to ask you a few questions, Ed."

"Fire away."

"Where have you been for the last two weeks?"

"At home; at work."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"My wife, my mother and sister, my co-workers and employment records."

"What do you do, Mr. Mortimer?"

"I'm a contractor. Carpentry and renovation, mostly. I work for a firm, a contracting group, and I'm required to report to the site every day. They log me in."

"Those records would of course be made available to us?"

"Of course."

"How long have you had this job?"

"Just over five years, ever since I graduated from high school."

"And you're married?"

"Yes. I've got a small daughter as well."

Mulder sat back and nodded quietly. "Thank you, Mr. Mortimer. That's all from me."

Scully then asked similar questions of the sister, who turned out to be a newlywed community college student, also accounted for in the last two weeks. They then went over the circumstances of James' abduction, just like with the other families interviewed for this case. They asked the family about their feelings and activities after Hoffman's capture, and about whether they had bee involved in any memorial activities. The answers were all exactly as they suspected nothing out of order, so Scully then let the two of them go, with Mulder, to obtain statements from their spouses. Mrs. Mortimer offered her a cup of tea, and Scully accepted. When the woman vanished into the kitchen, Scully stood up and looked around the room.

On the mantelpiece were the usual set of framed photgraphs, taken against a false background at the local department store or school picture day. She scanned graduation photos of the two older children, a handful of baby photos she guessed were the granddaughter, and a loving portrait of the late Mr. Mortimer. Scully felt her throat swell slightly. This mantelpiece was a testament to the strength of a family who overcame, or did their best to overcome, the apalling tragedy that had ripped through their lives.

Suddenly, Scully's attention was caught by a glimmer of recognition. Tucked behind the other photographs was one she knew. It showed a grinning boy with a crooked front tooth and gleaming chesnut brown hair, set off by glowing blue eyes, posed in front of an artificial Christmas backdrop. How often, she thought, had she seen that picture, how often during the worst days of her life. She could still see its place on the whiteboard in her mind, the second one, the death that let the world know that a serial killer was at his horrific work among their children. 1998 had seemed very far in the past, in the work of another agent and almost another case. She suddenly wished she had paid more attention to this boy, stamped on that sterile board.

His mother returned with tea, and Scully turned from the picture, almost with guilt. Mrs. Mortimer smiled sadly.

"I've had nine years to mourn him, Agent Scully. It's quite amazing to me, really: this year will mark the point where Jimmy has been dead just as long as he was alive. It has actually helped me to put everything into perspective. I still love him- I always will- but his time in my life is long over. He lived, he was here, but now he's not. He taught me things, and his short life gave me some of my sweetest memories, as well as all of my most painful. He brought me to life, just as I gave him his, such a long time ago."

Scully had no idea how to respond, but she put out a hand to touch the woman's arm. She couldn't help comparing her to the other distraught mothers she had spoken to over the las few days, their confusion and their anguish, and wondered if they could ever reach this kind of resignation and composure.

Mrs. Mortimer smiled again, and moved towards the older looking stereo system. Scully hadn't seen one with a tape player for a very long time, but Mrs. Mortimer slipped a tape into the machine, snapping the door of it shut. She pressed a button, and a single note rose from the speakers, high and pure and sweet.

"This is Jimmy, leading his choir when he was only eight years old. He got quite a few solos in this concert, but this is the nicest one. I keep it for when missing him gets too hard."

Scully felt tears well in her eyes as the music floated through the room, beautiful and unearthly as church music always seemed to her. Disembodied, like it was God or His angels singing. With a horrible lurch, she realized that that was what Hoffman had heard in the choirboys' music, and she felt sick to her stomach.

Right at that moment, her cell phone rang with a jarring, harsh tone, and Scully scrambled in her pockets to find it, disoriented by the feelings the music had evoked. Mrs. Mortimer stopped the tape without a word.

"Hello?"

"It's Dan. I've got some bad news." Scully felt the world drop out from beneath her feet.

"It's not another…" She saw Mrs. Mortimer go pale, so she stepped a more discreet distance away.

"No, no, not yet, but we've just had a call from the Salt Lake P.D.. They thought we'd like to know, in light of our investigation, that there's been a domestic disturbance arrest at the Holdermans'. Jude and his brother are in State custody, and Mr. Holderman is being held for assault and battery."

- - - - - - - -  
**A/N:** I am so, so sorry about how apallingly long this took. I was on vacation for three weeks, and had no access to the internet or any computer the whole time. I felt so guilty for going without even letting you all know through an author's note, but I didn't have time in the lead up to going.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'll have another one ready as soon as I can. (The summer is a horrible time to try and write)

Please review! Ceilidh


	8. Disintegration

**Title:** Canticle  
  
**Author:** CeilidhO  
  
**Summary and Disclaimer:** Please see previous chapters.

****_- - - _

Dillon, Montana  
October 25  
4:07 pm

Scully felt her pulse speed up, the blood run to her face. "Mr. Holderman has been arrested for assault and battery of whom?"

"Of Mrs. Holderman. Jeremy called the police at 2 am today, saying that his parents were fighting and that his mother was screaming. They arrived to find Mrs. Holderman being beaten by her husband with a belt."

Scully squeezed her eyes shut. "Where was Jude through all of this?"

Dan let out a breath. "He'd locked himself in the basement. The police only found him by searching the house. Jeremy told them that he always goes there when their father gets violent."

"Do you need me to come down?"

"No, no. You need to keep going, and we'll do our best for those boys. I'll see if Peg will let them stay at our place, at least for the night."

Scully rubbed her eyes. "All right. Keep me updated, please. I'll talk to you soon." Dan said goodbye, and Scully closed her phone slowly. Mrs. Mortimer looked over.

"What's wrong, Agent Scully? Are you all right?"

She tried her best to smile. "It's fine. Just some upsetting news, but there's nothing I can do about it at the moment." Right then, the door of the bungalow opened, and Mulder came back in. Scully excused herself from Mrs. Mortimer, thanked her, and said goodbye. Mulder did the same, and then followed Scully to the car.

As they pulled away from the house, Scully related the contents of the phone call to Mulder. He swore and slammed his hand against the steering wheel.

"I knew it Scully," he exclaimed, "I knew something was wrong at that house, but I didn't say anything. Damnit!"

"From what I gathered, it's been going on for some time now."

Mulder shook his head. "So what now?"

"Dan and Peggy, his wife, are going to ask if they can take Jude and Jeremy, at least for the night. There's nothing for us to do now, except carry on with the interviews."

Mulder swung the car onto the ramp for the southbound I-15. "Well, it's the Holtz family now. Does your memory need refreshing?"

Scully felt a shiver sweep through her, and she quietly chafed her hands together to warm the suddenly freezing digits. "No, no I don't. I remember them very clearly. Very clearly."

They drove on in silence for about an hour, and then they pulled off the highway into the small village of Cranden. It had barely changed in the last four years, Scully noticed, only now the flag pennants on the lampposts crackled and snapped in the gusting fall wind, instead of drooping limply in the stagnant summer air. The trees in planters along the sidewalk were crimson and gold instead of thick and green, and the occasional stray leaf was borne away in the wind to trip down the pavement.

Mulder turned the car down Oakmount Drive, and stopped in front of the Holtz's home. It was an average big, rural house; broad and wide, with a wraparound porch, it was two and a half storeys, with a driveway, garage and basketball hoop. A large flag stuck out into the slightly neglected front yard, waving energetically in the crisp air. In the driveway, a blond boy of about ten was playing basketball with a friend, but as they heard the car they both started, then sprinted off in opposite directions; one down the street and around the corner, and the blond into the house, slamming the heavy wooden door behind himself.

Mulder looked over at Scully, furrowing his brow. "That was strange," he said slowly. "A bit of an extreme reaction."

Scully, looking carefully at the house, felt uneasiness begin to burrow in her stomach. On closer inspection, the house was not average at all. All of the windows were shut and blocked, the glass painted over in white. The gate to the backyard, which had been blown back by the wind, swung forward with a creak of rust, hanging from one hinge. Next to the house, they could see as they got out of the car and approached, pulling out their badges, weeds were pushing through the wooden siding, cracking it in places.

Scully thought painfully of Mrs. Mortimer, of her calm and composure, and her quiet, unassuming grief, and knew whatever it was that was inside this wreck of a house was as vastly different from that woman as she could ever imagine. As they walked up the porch steps, the wood gave slightly beneath their feet, and the doorbell was grey with dust. When they rang it, a harsh voice came from inside.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

Scully looked over at Mulder, and then stepped forward. "Mr. Holtz? My name is Dana Scully, I'm with the FBI-"

"My son came running in here, yelling that two strangers drove, bold as brass, right into my driveway. You're on my property, and I'm armed, so state your business fast, and get out."

Out of the corner of her eye, Scully saw Mulder smoothly flick open the snap on his holster. Fear starting to prickle her skin, Scully tried again. "Our office called you. We just need to talk to you and your family. Please, we've got our badges to show; we're not here to do any harm. We just want to talk." When there was no answer from inside, Scully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and continued. "Do you remember us, Mr. Holtz? We came to talk to you once before, four years ago. We're the ones who found Jamie's killer."

The door creaked open slowly, and Mr. Holtz came into view. He held a rifle by his side, but loosely and pointed down. He squinted at their badges, and then gestured them inside. "I'm sorry," he said roughly. "It's just we're very careful." He looked at them again. "Last time, weren't you with another guy? A young one."

"That's right," Mulder said. "Alexander Paring. He was the one who was supposed to call you, to let you know we were coming. Did you get the call?"

In response, Mr. Holtz leaned over the banister of the staircase in the front hall and yelled "Mary!"

A moment later, a pretty, brunette girl of about sixteen appeared at the top of the stairs. "What?" she called down.

"Did you pick up a call from the FBI, some guy called Paring?"

"Yeah. I left a note on the counter."

"Damnit, Mary, you know we never see those. Get down here now, anyway. These FBI people need to talk to us all. Call Teddy, and I'll lever your mother out of bed."

Without another word to Mulder and Scully, he ran heavily up the stairs and disappeared onto the second floor. They turned to each other, and Scully raised her eyebrow. Mulder smiled faintly. "This place is spooky, all right," he joked weakly.

"It's wrong," Scully responded in a strained murmur. "It's… off. It's obvious that the family is still grief stricken, but still. Something is wrong here, and more than just on the surface."

Mulder stepped into the living room, and called back: "Well, for one thing, there design taste is horrific."

Scully followed him, and her eyes widened at the sight before her. She remembered the Holtz's living room as ordered and homey, but now as she stepped through the chipped doorway her gaze was met by chaos and nightmare.

The walls were coated in newspaper clippings, yellowed and dry, covering every square inch of the peeling wallpaper. The clippings fluttered in the draughts from a shattered window, and the ceiling was mottled with mildew and water damage. The only clean light came from the broken window; the rest was murky and thick, straining through the painted over windowpanes. The whole room smelt of rot and dry paper.

Disbelieving, Scully stepped closer to the walls and looked more closely at the clippings. "UTAH BOY STRANGLED, MURDERED" screamed one. "CHOIRMASTER CLAIMS SIXTH VICTIM" trumpeted another. Scully wandered along, her breath caught in her throat. She could see that in the places where there were no clippings, the wall was instead covered up with a yellowing, discolored photograph of Jamie Holtz. She made her way towards the front of the room, taking in fragments of articles here and there. _Killing rampage… No leads…Wings carved… Mutilated body found…_

When she reached the front mantelpiece, she was greeted by a dusty framed photograph of the little boy next to an old issue of People magazine, which shouted 'UTAH KILLER CAUGHT: HIS OWN SON THE ONLY SURVIVOR'. The by-line, almost smudged out from the passage of time, read '_George Hoffman wreaked havoc on the Four Corners states for nearly six years. Now, his only surviving victim, his own 9-year-old son, tells us his story.'_

Scully remembered the article, which had been shown to her by many when it was first published, mistakenly believing that the publicity would gratify her. But, more than the magazine, she remembered the photograph beside it. She remembered first seeing it here, on this mantelpiece, in this room, four years ago.

_…Scully continued on into the living room, walking over to the mantle over the gas fireplace. A familiar photo stared back at her there, one of a blond haired boy of about nine, grinning at the camera, his hair slicked back, his best tie cinched tightly around his neck, tucked into the collar of a crisp white suit shirt. _

_She tried not to remember that that was how he had died, from something cinched around his neck just too tightly; she tried not to see his little lips blue and gasping for air, blood running down his back from the wings already carved there. She didn't want to, but the images came unbidden. Someone spoke sharply behind her._

_"What are you doing?"_

Behind here, someone spoke the same words, so sharply and suddenly that she started hard. Scully turned around, and a boy stood there. For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating; the boy was Jamie, it seemed, exactly like him, a ghost standing before her in the flesh. After the rush of adrenaline was gone, she realized that the figure before her must be Teddy, Jamie's younger brother, who was ten now. She felt incredibly foolish, but put out her hand to him anyway.

"You must be Teddy. I'm Dana."

The boy stared at her, incredulous. "Get out!" he cried. "Get out of this room! Now!"

Startled, Scully did, quickly, bumping into Mulder where he stood at the door of the house. The boy slammed the living room door behind them, glaring at them with equal venom.

"That room," he said menacingly, "is none of your business. You're not to go in there, ever! No strangers!"

"Teddy?" came a soft voice from the top of the stairs. "Why are you shouting?"

When they looked up, they saw Mrs. Holtz at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a dressing gown. "Mom," Teddy murmured, his manner suddenly different. "Mom, they were… It was nothing. Just come down, mom, don't be upset."

Hesitantly, Mrs. Holtz came down the stairs, followed a moment later by Mr. Holtz and Mary. Mr. Holtz ushered them into the kitchen, where they sat around the table in the dim yellow light that leaked through the curtained glass doors.

"Why are you here?" Mr. Holtz asked again. "What do you want from us?"

Scully leaned towards him across the round vinyl table. "We're investigating a series of murders that may be linked to the murders of George Hoffman." Mrs. Holtz gasped, and Teddy put his hand on her arm. "As part of this investigation, we need to speak to the families of all of his victims. We've already spoken to the families of Peter Laurence, James Mortimer and Jude Hoffman, and now we need to speak to you."

Mr. Holtz frowned, and spoke in an accusatory manner that Scully remembered clearly. "What can we possibly have to do with some other sicko? Haven't you people put us through enough?"

Mulder and Scully shared a look, and he said levelly: "Look, sir, let's remember that we're the good guys. We're the people who found, caught and ultimately killed the bad guy. We're just doing our job, just finding out all we can about the background emotional elements of this horrific crime, these horrific crimes, past and present."

Mary spoke up, raising her eyes from the surface of the table. "What can we do? As you can see, it's ruined our lives."

"Mary!" hissed her father.

"Well," Mulder answered, keeping his tone carefully neutral. "As just a matter of procedure, we're going to need to know where all of you have been for the last three weeks. Once that's established, we just want to talk about the sort of stuff that went on in your family after you found out what had happened to your son, when you found out that Hoffman had been caught, about the aftermath of that."

"We're sorry to have to dredge up old emotions," Scully added, "but it really is necessary. Lives could be saved by it."

What emerged was an account so terrible that it made Scully's stomach churn just to watch them tell it, haltingly and reluctantly. After they were notified of Jamie's death at the hand's of a serial murderer, Mr. Holtz ground out, Mrs. Holtz locked herself in Jamie's room for twenty four hours, only coming out about an hour before Mulder, Scully and Paring had arrived. After the agents had left, insinuating a connection with the church, the family had gone and collected the other children- John, Mary and six year-old Teddy- from their grandparents' and stayed inside the house with the windows and doors all locked. Mrs. Holtz, Mary admitted with a sidelong glance at her dishevelled mother, had been nearly crazy with fear that one of her other children might be taken too.

When, only a few days later, news reached them of the killer's death, they had gone on a camping trip to the mountains to avoid the press. Fifteen year-old John had begged that they stay at home so he could watch the news coverage, but Mr. Holtz had adamantly refused, saying it was unhealthy. While camping, it emerged torturously and with much evasion that Mrs. Holtz had tried to commit suicide by hanging herself from a tree. When going off to use the washroom in the woods, John had found her and saved her by ripping the knot apart barehanded. He still had the scars on his hands, Teddy informed them with some awe.

"After we got home, things didn't get better," Mary mumbled. "Mom doesn't come out of her room much, and Daddy's really busy with work. I'm trying really hard to keep my grades up, but it's not easy. Things just really never got any easier."

Mr. Holtz, who had been sitting silently for most of the interview, his arms folded and a frown etched into his face, suddenly stood up. "All right," he snapped. "That's about enough of airing our dirty laundry. This conversation is over. I'm taking my wife up to bed, because she's sick right now and none of this pointless talking is good for her."

"I don't want to," Mrs. Holtz whispered, but her husband ignored her.

"Yeah, right, Dad," Mary said witheringly. "Mom's sick _right now_. When has she not been sick in the last four years? When has anything been right around here for the last four years? It's not airing dirty laundry, it's the-"

"Shut up!" Mr. Holtz roared, slamming his hand down on the table so hard the entire thing jumped and Mrs. Holtz let out a shrill whimper. Scully felt her heart crash into her throat, but before she could act, he bellowed: "When have I not put food on your table? When have I not done everything a man usually does? There is _nothing_ wrong with this family! Nothing!" Struggling to control his breathing, he turned to the agents, red in the face, a vein standing out on his temple. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. Right now. You are no longer welcome on my property. I'm within my rights." He marched them down the hallway to the door.

"Mr. Holtz," Mulder said, his eyes wide and his tone disbelieving. "We're conducting a federal investigation. It's a felony to impede us, and-"

"I've played my role in your investigation, I've done my part. Now leave." With that, he slammed the door and they heard the bolt slam home.

"Mulder," Scully said urgently as they reached the end of the driveway. "What if he's going to harm the children for what they told us? We have to do something."

"I know," he replied anxiously. Right at that moment, Mary came running around the side of the house, her expression satisfied but urgent.

"I can answer the rest of your questions, I can tell you things, but only further from here. Don't worry, my father never hits us, only the furniture."

A few minutes later, at the café around the corner, Mary told them about John over a milkshake.

"He's at college, but only a cheap one in Utah. He's nineteen, but he still has so much trouble with everything that's happened. Me, I just want to move on. I mean, I was closest to Jamie in age, but I get that life has to go on. Teddy barely even remembers Jamie, but John had the hardest time, next to Mom."

Scully tilted her head. "Why was that, Mary?"

"Well, if you think about it, John was always there when the worst happened. He was the one who answered the phone when the police called to say Jamie's body was found. Since my dad's name is John too, and my brother's voice was deep, they thought he was the father and told him everything. By the time they figured it out and got him off the phone, John had already heard all the details of the way Jamie's body was… treated."

"But the police don't usually go into that when they call," Mulder interjected with a frown. Mary shrugged.

"When they told him that it was murder, John asked for the details. They supplied them."

Scully felt a shudder run through her. A fifteen year-old, asking for the details of his baby brother's mutilated body? One look at Mulder told her he was thinking the same thing.

"Also," the girl continued, "John was the one who talked mom out of Jamie's room. Probably worst of all, he was the one who found her, y'know, in the woods. He tore his hands to shreds trying to rip open that knot. He even snapped a tooth trying to cut it with his teeth. The only part I remember is when he stumbled back into the campsite carrying her, both of them drenched in his blood." She took a moment, her eyes glazed as she gazed into her drink, absently stirring the thick mixture. "After that, he never left her if he could manage it. They did the living room together, with the newspaper clippings. Every time he comes home from college he puts up new ones he's found from the college library and the internet. I just thought you would want to know. He's got tons of emotional stuff to help with your investigation."

Scully took a moment to collect herself, then smiled at the girl. "You've helped us very much, Mary. Thank you for having enough courage to tell us this."

"No problem," she replied nonchalantly.

Mulder looked at her with concern. "Are you sure that you're safe at home?"

"Totally. I'll just say I went to the neighbors' till he cooled off. He cools off towards me and Teddy really fast, and he'll understand that I needed some space. I'll just get another safety, no-leaving-the-house-alone lecture. It'll be fine."

They dropped her off at the disintegrating house, and as they got back into the car Scully took the driver's seat. They pulled away fast through the town; Scully got onto the southbound I-15 and pulled out her cell phone at the same moment. She dialled rapidly, and Paring answered on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Alex, it's me. I need you to get on the state records site right now and find me the college enrolment information."

After a minute of silence, he said: "I'm there."

"I want you to find out where someone is enrolled. Are you in the right place?"

"Yes."

"Okay, good. Find the location of John Francis Holtz. That's Holtz, comma, John Francis. Francis with an 'i'."

"Okay… Give it a minute… Got him. There is a John Francis Holtz at the College of Eastern Utah in Price. He's in second year."

"That's it. Thank you, Alex. I'll call you back in a minute to explain."

Scully accelerated to 95 mph, and Mulder looked over. "Price? Where's that?"

"East, slightly southeast, of Salt Lake City. We flew right over it this morning."

"So we're going?"

Scully nodded grimly. "Let's go get our killer."

- - -  
A/N: Hey everybody. I hope you enjoyed this latest installment. It's possible it may be the last one for a while, since I'm going away on holiday again (for two weeks), and I'm leaving very soon. I will try my best to write a chapter in the next few days, but I can't guarantee. Thanks so much for sticking with me, and for continuing to review so wonderfully.

Talk to you soon (I hope)

Ceilidh


	9. The Absentee

Interstate 15  
Beaverhead County, Montana  
October 25  
5:30 pm

"Our killer?" Mulder exclaimed. "Scully, aren't you being a little presumptuous?"

She turned to him in astonishment. "Mulder, you, of all people, are asking me that? You?"

He looked slightly offended. "Look, Scully, as far as I'm concerned we're just going for a normal interview to follow up on our admittedly unorthodox one with the Holtz family. I'm not going to presume that someone we've never even talked is the killer simply because he's had a tragic life."

She exhaled in derision. "Oh, but you're perfectly willing to do that with Jude. I see."

"I only said that Jude needed consideration as a suspect, just as John Holtz does. I just thing that you are letting your personal involvement with Jude impede your judgment, and-"

"Mulder, John Holtz is worth more than consideration! He fits your own profile perfectly. He is the perfect age, has been severely damaged by Hoffman; his mother's attempted suicide, his brother's death, the complete and utter destruction of his family... Also, Mary Holtz made it fairly clear that John was obsessed with Hoffman. Did you see that living room, Mulder? Did you see that family?" She stopped for a furious breath. "He is at school in Utah, Mulder. He had the opportunity, the means, the motive. What else do you want from a suspect? Maybe we should just wait for another tiny boy to die before we even go!"

His eyes hard, Mulder turned away from her and stared out the window. They continued in silence for a long time, past mountains and farms, threading along the nearly deserted freeway. Scully felt guilt begin to gnaw at her, but for now, pride won out. He had been unfairly prejudiced toward Jude all along, she told herself determinedly, but the rational side, the fair side, the side, she realized with a pang, that Mulder had first fallen in love with, was telling her the truth. She knew that her feelings of guilt and responsibility and affection toward the boy had blinded her to reasonable questioning of his innocence. She felt in her gut that he was innocent, but guts are not enough when you have the responsibility of solving a crime.

She turned to Mulder, taking her eyes off the road to gaze at his features. She bit her lip slightly and began: "Mulder, I-" but he immediately cut her off.

"You have to call Alex. You said you would explain yourself to him."

Hurt, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number for their Salt Lake City office. Alex Paring picked up on the third ring.

"Paring speaking."

"Alex? It's Scully. How are things going for you?"

"Fine. We've just come back from interviewing the family of Matthew Carmichael, in Scipio, Millard County."

Scully remembered a glossy photo of a redheaded boy, who bore a startling resemblance to her little brother Charlie. "Anything?"

"No, he didn't even have any siblings. The family are still grieving, but they're moving on. But, Scully, you care to explain that phone call from before?"

Scully related the whole of the interview with the Holtzes, and, acutely aware that Mulder was listening, made the account as rational and unprejudiced as she could. Paring was quiet for a while, and when he spoke his words were halting.

"God... That's horrific. John certainly seems to fit the profile, and I'm with you in suspecting him. Do you want Dan and I to come to Price with you, maybe meet you there?"

"If you're not too busy, maybe you could meet us to talk it over after we interview him. We'll call when we get closer."

"All right. Drive safely."

Scully hung up the phone, and turned to Mulder, but his face and eyes were closed and remote, as inaccessible to her as when they had first met, so she turned back to the road and drove in silence until her eyes were scratchy with dehydration and they were somewhere in the lower land of central Idaho. At the next off-ramp she exited and pulled into the roadside motel. Mulder registered them without a word to her, and once inside they dressed for bed in silence. The silence was beginning to hurt Scully's ears like something tangible, like being deep underwater.

As she slid into the lumpy bed beside him, everything seemed to rush back to her in a roar and crash like floodwater, flotsam of grief and horror smashing into her body as she recalled in desperate detail everything since the sweating cadet at Quantico had delivered the message that Mulder wanted to see her. Images and sounds, even textures assaulted her; the yellowed news clippings, the glint of her scalpel, the cold give and take of lifeless flesh, and above it all the unearthly, perfect choirboy voice of James Mortimer, singing the soundtrack of this abominable epilogue to his and the others' terrible deaths.

She felt her body began to shake, and like a lifeline she felt the beautiful warmth of Mulder's arm reach out and pull her to him.

"I said," he whispered, his voice rough, "that you wouldn't have to be alone. I mean that. And... oh, Scully, I don't want to be alone any more than you do."

She turned in his arms and buried her face in against his shoulder, her hands moving in soothing circles over his body, just as he had once done for her in the height of her distress, four years ago, in the cold of a bathroom stall.

In time, distress faded from their minds, and at last their bodies relaxed into sleep.

- - - -

College of Eastern Utah  
Price, Carbon County  
October 26  
4: 21 pm

Scully and Mulder walked along the dingy hallway, searching for room number 341, John Holtz's room. The carpet was sticky and the walls were smudged, and through it all ran a faint current of muted rock music. Mulder smiled and raised his eyebrows.

"It reminds me of my college days. Unspeakable stains, unspeakable music, unspeakable women..."

Scully looked at him sideways. "Mulder, you were at Oxford. How unspeakable could it have been?"

"You'd be surprised."

She rolled her eyes, and then crossed the hallway suddenly. "Here it is, Mulder. It's his room." When he was firmly in place beside her, she collected herself and knocked quickly. There was no answer, so she knocked again and tried calling out. "John? John Holtz? Are you there?" Even to herself, her voice sound shrill and nervous. After some more knocking, a door opened across the hall and a head poked out.

"You looking for that John guy?" its disheveled owner asked. "'Cause he's not here."

Mulder turned. "When did he leave? Do you know for how long?"

"No... He just left this morning. I figured he was leaving for the weekend or something."

"Do you know John?" Scully asked.

"No, not really. I mean, we've been on the same floor, across the hall from each other, for the last year and a bit, but I don't know much about him except his name and that he hates going home. He let that slip once. I got him to go out with a whole group of us this one time, but he never said a word and all the girls said he creeped them out, so that was a bust."

"Does he ever bring anyone back here?"

"Not that I've seen."

Mulder took a step toward him and scribbled something on the back of a business card. "Listen... Sorry, I didn't get your name."

"Dave. Dave Young."

"Listen, Dave, can you give me a call at this number when John gets back? It's important that we know when he is. He's not in any trouble, we just need to talk to him."

"Can do."

As they started to walk away, Scully turned back. "Mr. Young?"

"Yeah?"

"Has John been away a lot during the last few weeks? Suddenly, like this?"

"Yeah, but it's only ever for a few days. Three at the most, usually only one. But all the time, yeah."

"Thank you, you've been a great help."

Mulder opened the door to the dorm and consulted his map of the campus. "I think we should visit the records office first, and see if any of John's absences coincide with days of disappearances or of deaths and body disposals."

Scully nodded and pulled out her cell phone.

"This is Dan Morris."

"Dan, its Dana. How are you doing on your end?"

"We've talked to three of his professors, all of whom say that he is shy, uncommunicative, not terribly bright, and frequently absent. What did the man himself have to say?"

"He wasn't there. The boy across the hall said that he had been away since yesterday, and relayed approximately the same characteristics as the professors. We're going to check his attendance records now."

"All right. Alex and I will meet you soon, once we've spoken to a few more teachers."

"Dan..." Scully avoided Mulder's gaze for a moment. "How's Jude?"

"When I left this morning he seemed subdued, but not overtly disturbed. He wasn't crying or shouting or anything, and was managing to have a decent conversation with Janie. They're about the same age, so she's been trying to make him feel better by talking with him."

"Thank you, Dan, for taking care of him. It means..."

"I know, Dana. I'll see you later."

She hung up the phone, and Mulder smiled lopsidedly at her. "I'm sorry, Scully," he said softly, "that I don't feel the way you do about him."

"Oh, Mulder, it's not you who should be sorry."

They entered the records office a few minutes later, and presented themselves at the desk, badges out.

"Ma'am, we'd like to obtain a student's attendance record, please," Mulder said.

"Sorry, sir, but I can't give that out without authorization."

Scully leaned forward slightly. "We are conducting a federal investigation. It is a felony to impede us." Inwardly, she had to admit with an internal smile that that was one of her favorite investigative lines.

The woman behind the desk blinked, and then gestured toward the adjacent computer lab. "I'll log you in."

Once she was gone, Scully entered 'Holtz, John Francis' into the search, and a long list of absences immediately scrolled across the screen. "Look, Mulder," Scully whispered. "They almost all date from after late September. Matthew Hughes was abducted on October 9th, so that leaves enough time for him to have 'cased', if you will, the Holderman's house beforehand."

"Scully..." Mulder warned in a low voice.

"Also, there is an absence from October 8th to 10th as well. There's one on the 19th, the day his body was found, and also ones on the 20th and 23rd, the days of Simon Brigham's kidnapping and of the dumping of his body. There's one missed class the afternoon of the 22nd."

"Scully..." Mulder looked at her, his eyes wide, fearful and excited at the same time. "Print this out and let's find Alex and Dan. I think it's time to go to AD Chilton and get a search warrant, maybe even an arrest warrant."

Scully printed out three copies of the record, then they hurried out onto the campus lawn. Mulder spotted the other two agents coming out of a building across the courtyard, and the hurried toward them, thrusting the document out before them in triumph. The other two examined the paper, and then their eyes lit with glee.

"Hot damn!" Alex exclaimed. "Hot damn, have we got him!"

Scully laughed, remembering a sunny day in Cranden four years before, when Alex Paring had let slip identical words in similar triumph. Light and smiling together for the first time since reuniting, the agents walked together through the crisp fall air to the parking lot, where they drove in convoy back to Salt Lake City.

- - - -

FBI Field Office  
400 South St.  
October 26  
6:52 pm

"Yes sir. Yes sir, I understand. Thank you very much, sir. Goodbye for now."

Assistant Director George Chilton put down the phone and smiled widely at the four agents on the other side of his desk. "Well," he said after a moment. "That was the final call. You're clear to go ahead."

Scully felt an unrestrained smile burst out on her face. Dan clapped his hands together, and Scully saw Mulder clasp Paring's shoulder. "Thank you, sir," she said feelingly.

Chilton straightened his tie and leaned across the desk. "Listen. I want you to proceed very carefully. There will be no screw ups with legalities like last time, no spontaneous arrests based on theories, are we clear?"

"Yes sir," they all replied. Scully felt a flush tinge her cheeks. She was still ashamed and guilty about what had happened with Hoffman; she still wondered if they could have spared Jude his torment.

The older man relaxed, shook all their hands with real warmth, and then dismissed them. Scully strode out of Chilton's office, followed closely by Dan, Mulder and Alex. Her heart was beating rapidly; anxiety and joy chased through her body, leaving her feeling alternately shaken and fortified.

After a careful presentation of the evidence, the agents had convinced Chilton to get on the phone with the upstairs authorities, and, after a tense hour or so, had obtained a search warrant for John Holtz and his room, as well as a guarantee of a fast-tracked arrest warrant if it was needed.

They got into the elevator and went down to the basement, walking past large gray filing cabinets and to the door of their office.

"Right," Dan said. "I'll start organizing a strategy of surveillance, and Mulder and Alex should start a list of things that we should look for in Holtz's apartment. Dana, if you could get a hold of more of his school records and go over the area maps, you might be able to determine where he might be using as his hideaway."

"I can include my autopsy reports," Scully added. "There was a pebble in Matthew's right shoulder that I knew would be useful eventually."

They all set down to work, and as Scully did she felt it all coming together. For once, she was working under normal conditions, without fear or pain or immediate danger. As she looked back and forth between the documents before her, the connections began to be made, solid and concrete, interlocking in the perfect way evidence can.

She looked at the area map again. There is that bridge... she thought slowly, but her concentration was suddenly broken by the harsh jangling ring of a phone only inches away. Scully jumped hard, and her heart began to race. Lately, it had never been a good thing when the phone rang.

"Scully."

"Dana?"

It took Scully a moment to recognize the voice, but once she did panic began to set in. "Peggy? What's wrong?" Dan's head snapped to attention across the dingy room. A moment to listen to the ragged breathing on the other end of the line, and then Scully put her on speakerphone and spoke her fear. "Peggy, what's wrong with the children?"

"Oh god, Dana, it's Jude. He's missing." Scully felt her heart stop, and the woman continued. "Apparently he's been missing since the first class after lunch. There was some horrible mix up, and the school called the Holdermans' house to report it. Of course there was no one there, so no one even knew until a few minutes ago."

Scully felt faint, covered with a weak static buzzing, and she stared ineffectually at the phone. "Can you hang on a minute, Peg? I've got someone on the other line." She pressed the transfer button, and it clicked over to the other line. Suddenly, with force, Rob's voice was projected into the room.

"Dana? Oh my god, Dana, you've got to help us."

"Rob, what is it?"

"Oh god... Dana, you remember my nephew Thomas?" The air in the room was suddenly thick and cold. "Oh, sweet lord... He didn't come home from school. He's gone."


	10. Hard Red Ground

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

- - - -

FBI Field Office  
October 26  
7:01 pm

Something unnamable coursed through Scully in the ringing silence after Rob's words. Sick and sour, it felt as if it was poison, burning and nauseas. In the interminable moment of paralysis the feeling gave her, she heard Dan speak words of comfort and action, heard the phone put down, and finally put a name to it.

It was doubt; slow and spinning, it was filling her senses. Could she have been wrong, wrong in her fervent conviction that Jude was innocent? Could she have overlooked something crucial in her sentimental blindness? The fact of both boys missing at once, with all of the force of Mulder's suspicions behind it, seemed insurmountable. Slowly though, Scully's mind revolved back to the fact that John Holtz was also unaccounted for. The thought settled her back to the action around her.

"But who should go where?" Dan was asking. "I know Rob Abrams, but I also, of course, know my own house and family better."

"I certainly shouldn't go to the Abrams'," Mulder answered quickly. "I'm the last person they need to see."

Scully forced her tongue to move, and she said: "I'll go, and I think Alex should go with me. That seems to be the most logical way to divide us up."

Mulder nodded. "All right. Let's go now, and gather all the information we can. We'll meet back here at ten or eleven tonight."

"Dan and I can get the cars ready," Alex said, "If you two can collect all the forms and documents we'll need."

Scully agreed, and Mulder nodded, his face closed. The other two grabbed their coats and strode out the door, urgency apparent in every line of their bodies.

After a moment, they began to gather up their papers in preparation, but as Scully slid the materials into her briefcase she noticed Mulder's hands were shaking. He was two or three feet from her, but she could see that the papers in his hands were trembling, and his skin was pale as he tried in vain to stuff everything into his own briefcase.

Impulsively she reached over and seized them, feeling how cold they were beneath her touch. Mulder looked up, surprised, and they locked eyes. Scully felt the wind knocked out of her by they expression they held. She stepped closer, and she could feel the heat that emanated from him, that began to suffuse his hands within her own. She struggled to pull in a breath, her heart racing, and Mulder's eyes seemed the softest and warmest thing she had ever seen, the lines of his face the most beautiful thing in the world. He stepped a few inches closer.

In the next second he kissed her, his lips slightly rough against hers, and she felt again the great bubble of happiness rise up through her body as it had in the earliest moments of their life together, and she knew with the greatest certainty that she was in love.

- - - -

Residence of Mark Abrams  
Taylorsville, Utah  
Suburban Salt Lake City  
8:05 pm

Scully stepped from the black sedan and crossed to the porch of the pleasant two-story house, her skin cool in the damp air. Inside the house, every light was on, and Scully could see figures moving back and forth rapidly behind the pale curtains. Alex stepped up on the porch behind her, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Scully glanced over at him for moment, receiving his brief smile, and then she pressed the doorbell.

It was opened almost immediately by a tall boy with wavy brown hair and a worried face. For a moment Scully didn't even recognize him, and for that same moment the aching brown eyes debated, and then Tyler Abrams threw himself into Scully's arms. He held her fiercely, and she gripped him back, running a hand through his thick hair. He pulled away after a few seconds, and looked up at her with a face gleaming with tears.

"Dana, he's gone. Thomas, Thomas, he's gone, and that killer is going to get, him, Dana..."

"Shhh, shhh... I'll find, him, I will. I promise to you, Tyler, I will find him." Hurt burned through her chest, and she thought about how a promise like that would sound to Mrs. Brigham, alone and breaking apart from grief in her little house in Aneth. She put it aside as best she could, and gripped Tyler by the hand. "Take me to your dad."

He led them into the house, which was bright and loud and smelled like fear. All of the extensive Abrams clan- two parents, six siblings, their assorted husbands and wives and innumerable children- was crowded into the same network of rooms, making phone calls, printing flyers, crying and comforting, shell-shocked with grief. Tyler led them to his father, Mark, who was sitting with a formidable older woman and speaking urgently on the phone. Nearby, Lauren, his wife and Tyler and Thomas' mother, was clutching a pillow and staring into space, absentmindedly shushing a toddler Scully didn't recognize.

Tyler tapped on his father's shoulder, attracting the attention of the older woman across from him. Scully looked over, and matched gazes with Tallulah, the matriarch. She braced herself for the onslaught of hostility and tirade that had been the woman's trademark when Scully had known her, but instead the crackling blue eyes softened, and Scully felt herself clasped by the arms. The dappled hands on her forearms shook slightly, and Tallulah spoke, in a voice rasped and tentative with fear.

"Please, Dana. Please find our boy. We need him back... We need him home... I need him safe." The woman's gaze grew brighter with faith. "You found that odious Choirmaster, you found that little boy Judas... You can find my Thomas."

With searing pain, Scully remembered Jude's own similar words, his own similar faith. And what had that got him, what had that got Matthew? A tiny gravestone and a broken life. Scully felt terrifyingly paralyzed, powerless, and as worthy as an ant for the faith bestowed in her by all of these grieving, desperate people.

She was saved from answering by Mark hanging up the telephone and tuning to her, his own eyes determined and denying, wavering resolution on the brink of desolation.

"So," he said. "I'd better give you and your partner the facts as they occurred then. The timeline is this..." Scully could feel him begging her to play along in this game of desperate bravado, and she did.

"Let me just get out my notebook," she said.

The story that emerged was this: six year-old Thomas had been seen exiting his first-grade classroom, and walked out to the playground with a cousin of the same age, Abrams sibling Becky's daughter Ariana. As they were walking to the bus stop, he had realized that he had forgotten his book bag, told Ariana to get on the school bus ahead of him, and ran back into the building. When she didn't see him on the bus, she had guessed that it was simply too busy and crowded, and that he'd gotten a seat up front with someone else. Clapping games with a friend had pushed him from her mind for the remainder of the trip, and he had only re-entered it when he failed to get off the bus to meet his waiting mother and younger brother, the toddler Scully had noticed with Lauren.

Even then, Lauren- taking into account Ariana's explanation of the forgotten book bag- had merely assumed that he had missed the first bus, and would soon arrive on the second. The second came and went and Lauren, beginning to panic, drove them all to the school to pick him up there. However, he was nowhere to be found at the school, and none of the teachers could remember seeing him after his return for the bag. They all then conducted a basement to attic search of the school, then the playground, and then several teachers drove back and forth along the possible walking routes between the school and the bus stop by the little boy's house. It was then 6:43, three hours after Thomas' expected arrival at the bus stop.

Finally, at 6:55, Thomas' tiny book bag was found in a planter outside of the north entrance to the school, hastily shoved under the fallen leaves that littered it. The police and the closest extended family (i.e. Rob) were then notified, but Rob's call had reached the FBI just ahead of the Salt Lake City P.D.'s.

Rob came in from the kitchen as Mark finished speaking, struggling to control himself, and handed him a glass of ice water without a word. Scully looked sideways at Alex, blinking heavily against the stinging in her eyes, and saw him huddled over his notebook, over his shorthand transcript of Mark's words, and wiping furiously at his lower eyelids.

Rob clasped his brother on the shoulder, and then placed a hand on Scully's arm, whispering: "Can we talk somewhere quiet?"

He led her through the bright, hot, dense rooms, and soundlessly up the front staircase. On the second floor, the noise below became hum of pained voices, and faded even more as Rob ushered her into a small bedroom, closing the door behind him with a faint click. The moon beamed through the gauzy curtains on the windows, and lit a silver trail on the wooden crib by the far wall.

Rob crossed to it, and gripped the rail until his knuckles were white. Scully came up beside him, and stared down at the sleeping form within. The baby was asleep on her back, her arms flung out and her thin blond hair still barely covering her head, and Scully recognized her as Rob and Jenna's five month-old daughter, Sarah.

"Do you know what her middle name is?" Rob murmured. "It's Katherine. I chose it, and Jenna has no idea why. It's better that way, I'm sure, but I thought you might like to know."

Scully felt something thick in her throat, and managed: "Rob, I..."

He interrupted swiftly. "Why Thomas, Dana? I know you know why, but I thought it might not be an explanation you wanted to give in front of the whole family."

"Yes, I do know why, Rob," she answered slowly. "At the very least, we are reasonably certain we know why."

"Tell me, then."

She bit her lower lip for a moment, and then tried her best to compress their theories into a single explanation. "This killer targets boys in the ages of six and seven, with the names of Disciples. That we know of, he has killed twice: six year-old Matthew Hughes and seven year-old Simon Brigham. His victims, or their families, have all been recently been featured in the media, or perhaps have been in the past. He is obsessed with the murders of George Hoffman, and only..." This was the hardest part, and her mouth was dry. "...And only targets those somehow involved with the Hoffman case."

His response was slow and toneless; his features studied and closed in the moonlight. "So it's because I was involved with you. That's why Thomas is being tortured as we stand here talking."

Scully flinched back, is if from a physical blow, but she could not block the swell of anger that rose at his words. "Well, Rob, you do have to factor the psychopath in there somewhere." She sighed heavily, the anger ebbing. She knew she would feel the same in his position. "Yes, though, Thomas is being targeted specifically because of your involvement with me. I seem to recall that you gave statements to the paper when I was in the hospital after Hoffman's arrest, and to the reporters for that _People_ article. That's probably how he found out about you all; we suspect he hoards articles about the case."

Rob frowned for a moment, and disappeared out into the hallway. A minute or two later, he reappeared, clutching something in his hand. It was the magazine. The familiar headline blazed out at her from the article as Rob opened the pages to the marked one, and began to skim through the columns of writing.

"Tyler kept the magazine," he said, "because he was mentioned by name. Here it is: _Tyler Abrams, 10, Agent Scully's pseudo stepson_- I remember he was very impressed with that word, 'pseudo'- _seems worried when he answers the phone at his uncle's home. It's because Dana is in the hospital, he says, and he's been left to watch his brother, Thomas, 2. He is trying to teach the little boy to pray, he claims, to 'Give Dana all the backup he can give her'. When media members phone again two days later, there is no answer at the house, but this charming insight into the recovering agent's personal life is warmly shared between them._"

Scully was silent. She had never read the section of the simpering article that dealt solely with her, and this wonderful comment of Tyler's had never been shared with her by anyone before now. "Well," she managed to say, "There you have the most probable source. The killer must have thought to do the math, and found Thomas to be the perfect age."

Rob nodded, and then nodded again, and Scully saw in the shifting moonlight that his eyes were bloodshot and glittering, and he spoke after a moment, his voice cracked and quavering.

"It just seems unfair, just so unfair. I don't even know who to be angry with, I don't even know who to blame, and I've got all this guilt and rage and horrible fear just trampling around inside me, and I don't... I just don't know who to let it out at." Then, face pale and tears streaming, Rob collapsed onto his knees at the foot of his daughter's cradle.

_- - - -_

_He couldn't get enough of looking at it. _

_He had been sitting just staring at it for ages, watching the small body root around in the darkness, scratching its fingers in the hard red dirt, at the hard red walls, at the scraping red rusted chain that gouged deep into the gleaming white flesh of its neck and wrists and ankles. He had just had just recently come up with the idea of putting fresh sandpaper in thick strips on the inside of the manacles, but as he watched it cry from the stripping of its skin he wondered in the bubbled, flaking oxidized metal wound have had the same effect, at a much lower cost. _

_Another idea came to him as he watched it burrow for warmth and some semblance of comfort, a delicious idea; and as he thought it he began to absentmindedly strip the skin off his kneecap with a long, dirty fingernail, steadily made dirtier by his own thick blood, now welling in drops and strings from his knee. _

_Why not buy some old nails or screws, use a bolt cutter to snip them off, oh say about an inch from the tip, and glue or smelt the pointed ends into the wrist manacles- of course placed where they couldn't nick an artery. He felt his pulse speed up as he considered the way it would make the thing in his cave scream, and he instinctively reached down to touch himself, just as instinctively yanking his own hand back before it made contact his naked skin, as if he had been slapped._

"_Remember," he mumbled to no one in particular. "Not there." As a compromise, he reached down expertly and began to pick at some of his older scabs, high on his inner thigh. _

_Above him, the high, wide arc of the bridge blocked out portions of the star- and moonlight, and behind him the river sighed and kissed the solid red earth of the bank. Beneath his naked body the ground, usually shifting and scrubby and loose with dust and pebbles, was as hard as the bedrock he imagined miles below. His own weight left no mark behind him when he stood, no footprint, no disturbance, no indentation to mark his existence. _

_Standing now, watching the thing inside the hollow pillar scrabble at the ground, he giggled at the irony of it choosing to attempt to tunnel in that particular spot, right above where, if memory served, another of his kind was rotting only three feet below those desperate hands. He remembered what a marvel, what a gift, the remoteness of the bridge had been then, as he had first used metal to strip the skin off anyone but his own self. But he had been too excited, too young, and had lost control. He had ended up flaying the whole back with a kitchen knife, and, in a panic caused by the sheer amount of blood, burying the remains in the rust colored ground and staying away from his bridge for nearly a year._

_But its lonely call, along with the hungry ravages of the Beast upon his own body, had brought him back here, again and again, and had now brought this new plaything too._

_Lucky thing._

- - - -

FBI Field Office  
11: 57 pm

"...No one else in the family knew anything more than what Mark Abrams told me. None of the teachers the police canvassed at the school saw anyone, or any of the students in Thomas' class. As far as they're concerned, he vanished off the face of the earth at 3:30 this afternoon." Scully wrapped up her summary of her and Alex's time at the Abrams', and ran a hand hard across her forehead.

Dan looked down, pinching the bridge of his nose, and when he looked up at Scully again, his expression stony. "It's not looking good for Jude, Dana. He skipped his last two afternoon classes today, telling a friend and leaving school at about 2:15. Cross-town to the suburbs on the bus, his school's about forty-five to fifty-five minutes away from Thomas'. That gives him plenty of time to get there and find a good, hidden place before the school lets out at 3:25. The sad thing for Thomas is, if he hadn't gone back for the book bag, he'd probably be safe at home right now."

"That's not necessarily true," Mulder cut in. "He may have been safe today, but who knows about tomorrow? So, Ju...so the killer picked a bad spot to hide this afternoon- he'd know better next time. And there would have been a next time."

"How did no one notice Jude was missing before... what was it, almost seven o'clock tonight?" Alex asked, his brow furrowed. Dan sighed, and leaned back against the filing cabinet, absently fiddling with the strap on his brown leather holster.

"Well, there was some sort of confusion with the school about his contact numbers. Peggy and I decided, and told Jude, that he was supposed to provide them with our number as the emergency contact for the period he was with us." He took a deep breath, and looked over at Scully with an unfathomable expression. "He must never have done that, because when he was marked absent for the first class he missed, and the attendance got down to the office, they called the Holdermans' house to report the absence- as you may remember, Mrs. Holderman stayed at home. Of course, no one was there to receive that call, and Peggy only found out by getting so worried that she called the school herself. Thank god one of the secretaries was working late, or we might have thought that something had happened to him."

Alex puffed out his cheeks. "Thank god."

Scully felt heat rise through her body, and she looked down, away from the eyes of all the others.

- - - -

Morris Residence  
Salt Lake City  
October 27  
11:32 am

Scully sat at Dan and Peggy's round blonde wood kitchen table, surrounded by the remains of lunch. Across from her, three children were staring at her miserably, picking at cold scraps of food without any real thought. After another few minutes, three year-old Jeremy pulled his thumb out of his mouth and asked her for the fourth time: "Where's Jude?"

"I don't know, Jeremy." Scully repeated. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"We told you, Jem," Dan's older daughter, fifteen year-old Rachel said patiently. "Dana, and our Dad, and Alex and Mulder, they're all detectives, like on TV. They find people; it's what they do."

Once again, Scully felt shame prickle at her in answer to the absolute faith invested in her. She thought in the second before she managed to smile back at Rachel of the dozens of people she had disappointed in her career, all of the families whose losses had meant only to her a frustrating rising body count.

"Yeah," twelve year-old Janie continued. "And it's not like Jude is hiding or anything, so how hard can it be, huh Jem?"

The little boy smiled and wiggled onto the younger girl's lap, pressing himself into her and turning the radiant smile to Scully.

"Okay, Jem," Scully said with the best grin she could muster. "Can you have a little grown-up discussion with me now, adult to adult?" The boy grinned more widely, and nodded. "Okay then. Did Jude ever mention to you in the last few days that he was going to take a trip?" A rapid shake of the head. "Did he ever mention any little boys that he knew, did he ever talk about little boys, like first grade boys, that he was making friends with?" Another shake of the head. "Was he really sad or angry in the last couple of days?" A fast nod. "Yeah, I bet he was. I bet you were too, because of the fight that your mom and dad had."

Without warning, the attentive expression dropped from Jeremy's eyes, and he leapt from the table, heading for a jumble of bright toys Scully could faintly see in the living room. "Sorry about that," Peggy said, bringing cups of coffee and juice to the table. "His attention-deficit doesn't seem as bad as Mrs. Holderman led us to believe, but it's certainly present. Just wait about half an hour, and he'll probably be interested again. We've found he usually works something like that."

Scully pushed back her chair and stood up. "Would you mind if I took quick look around Jude's room, his temporary room, then, while I give Jeremy his space?"

Peggy nodded. "Uh, sure. It's the study on the second floor; he's been sleeping on the foldout couch. You remember the way?"

"Yes, I do. Thanks very much."

Scully turned and left the kitchen, heading up the back stairs as frustration mounted in her body. The night had been horrific, visions of Thomas' torture parading through her head, rage at her inactivity making her toss and turn, heating her sheets and making Mulder grumble in his sleep. She could barely stand it, lying in bed, sleeping, while somewhere out there Thomas might be being carved up as she desperately burrowed her face into her cheap pillow.

She had been awakened at 4:55 am by a phone call from Rob, asking if there were any new leads. Despite her negative answer, he, or one of his relatives, continued to call about every twenty minutes. In fact, one of the other agents should be fielding one right now, if the Abrams were on schedule.

There was nothing much of forensic interest in Jude's room, she realized after a quick search. He was still living out of the suitcase Scully knew Mrs. Holderman had been allowed to bring him, and the bed sheets were piled and rumpled, thick on the thin mattress. The curtains were half open, letting dim bleached light into the small room, and it smelled faintly stale. Nothing, Scully remembered from her childhood, unusual for a twelve year-old boy- almost a thirteen year-old boy, Scully realized. Jude's thirteenth birthday was in four days, on Halloween.

With a spark of interest, she noticed something on the desk. It was a newspaper clipping, in color, from where Scully couldn't tell. The picture, however, she did recognize. It was herself, standing at a podium covered with microphones, pale and dazed in the flashbulbs. With her professional eye, Scully could see that there was still a faint sedative haze in her eyes. It was from the press conference the FBI had given three days after Hoffman's capture, if you could call it a capture. She was only just out of the hospital, had been out a day, half a day, she couldn't remember exactly, and all of the questions had felt so overwhelming. Mulder's presence behind her was the only thing that had kept her upright.

Covering her hand with a tissue for precautions, she folded out the rest of the clipping, and read: NEW MURDER CASE BRINGS BACK TOP GUNS. The by-line dated it October 20, the day of her arrival in Salt Lake City. It continued: _Special Agent Dana Scully, of the capital's FBI, returned to Utah today to assist the local Field Office once again in their search for a killer. Agent Scully was the lead agent on the infamous Choir case, and in June 2003 she shot and killed serial murderer George Hoffman in self-defense._

It continued, but Scully stopped reading, her attention caught instead by a messy scrawl across the bottom of the article. Squinting, she made it out. _Glad to know our girl's back in town. Aren't you?_

Suddenly, a young voice spoke from the doorway. It was Jeremy. "Jude was sad since he got a present from the postman. He didn't let me see it, but I saw that fall out, the paper you're holding."

"Thanks, Jeremy," she said after a moment, but he had already drifted away. Her mind was in turmoil, spinning and clicking and beginning to put something together, something she didn't want to think directly at, in case she should lose it.

She sat down hard on the bed, hand coming down first onto the piled blankets, and a sudden cracking noise interrupted her thoughts. Eyebrows knitted, she reached under the blankets and pulled something out, and in an instant her idea slammed together with the force of an avalanche.

In her hand she held a letter, and the return address read: _College of Eastern Utah, Price, UT, _and the name of the sender was John F. Holtz.

- - - -  
A/N: I'm really sorry this took so long, but like a said in the note for Chapter 8, I went on holiday for two weeks (I squeezed out Chap. 9 in the two/three days before I left- I wanted to leave you all with something before I went). Then, right away, I started school, and that's always a horrific time to try and write. Anyway, I made this chapter extra long to make up for it, and I'll do better next time, I promise.

As always, please, please review, and thanks for the reviews for Ch. 9! Ceilidh


	11. Inundation

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

- - - -

Morris Residence  
Salt Lake City  
12:02 pm  
October 27

Her hands shaking, Scully stared at the letter. Slowly, deliberately she transferred her grip to the outside edges of the paper. With her right hand, she reached into the inside pocket of her suit jacket, drew out a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on with a slap of plastic against her soft skin.

She did the same to the other hand, and with a pounding heart, dry mouth, and her breath hitched in her throat, Scully opened the envelope, unfolded the paper within, and read.

_My dearest Judas,_

_For years now I have longed to send you this letter, ever since I learned of your existence in this world. That very existence is a miracle to me. You can answer all the questions that burn at my mind; you can provide the explanations no other source can. You are of the very flesh that drives my being._

_No doubt, Judas, you are at this moment very confused as to the author of the epistle you now hold in your hand. For now, before I have a chance to explain myself and my own deeds, I will say only this- I know that Matthew's dying breath was spent calling for you. Please, do not throw this letter aside at my revelation. It is imperative that you read on and attend my words. _

_For years now I have burned. It is sufficient to let you know that the actions of the Choirmaster robbed my family and reduced them to the ashes that they are now; he robbed my mother of her mind, my father of his faith, and my brother of his life. However, he did not rob me! He endowed my life with the great pain and curiosity that now gives it meaning and purpose._

_I have long sought to understand the mind and man that accomplished the great deeds that the Choirmaster did. Anyone how can inflict pain and destruction, who can reduce order to chaos, who can slash and create with the power and precision that George Nathaniel Hoffman could is indeed a great man. He was- and is- somebody. He took living flesh and made it dead; he took tender skin and made it art- for never let anyone tell you otherwise, Judas. George Nathaniel Hoffman created art in his destruction. And what masterful destruction!_

_I too have taken living flesh and made it dead. Dead, dead, all dead! But I am not a master, and whatever actions I did, I did from curiosity. How did it feel to cut and choke and have such ultimate dominion? Was anyone capable? Was no one capable? Did some demon take you over and order you do grind out the final spark? I know demons, Judas; I know my demon, my Beast, who shreds and claws and slits my flesh into pulp and blood and laughs when I cry for her to stop and put out the burning that she scorches as I try to stay away from my bridge and my bodies._

_I know my Beast, Judas, but still my questions are unanswered._

_Did I know the solutions in my darkest, softest metal moments and the pit of my fury swallowed them up again? Is that why I am ablaze with wonder yet and cannot escape the teeth of my body long enough to remember and awake from dark?_

_My pen barely skims the page, Judas, as I approach my conclusion, and I can no longer order what I write in the way that I would want you to read it, in the way that is right to justify my education, but that doesn't matter any more does it? Does it?_

_So imagine- given my state- my excitement upon learning of your whereabouts! I know you Judas, more about you than you can imagine, and the idea that has filled my thoughts in the last few blood-soaked days is that you can end my torment! Of course, it's now so simple- if the answers are anywhere, they are in you. The Lord himself says that the sins of the father are upon the son, and so he, your own great father, must have imparted to you the answers that I seek so horribly and desperately._

_So now we reach the heart of it, and the fate of many rests on you, Judas. (How ironic! The fate of many on a Judas…) I have an idea, an order: come to me, come to me and my bridge and my bodies and my Beast, and you can answer my questions for me; I know you can. When I know the answers, Judas, when I know the why and the how of slashing and killing and greatness, the Beast will be satisfied, I know she will. If you come to me, Judas, come alone, the answers will be told to me, and the Beast will stop her flaying of me and others. Do you get it? Do you? If you come to me (alone- all alone- and if THEY're with you I'll know, I will), if you come and answer me it will all stop, Judas. Do you get it? The Beast will leave, and there will be no more bodies! This body that I have now, this boy Thomas, will go free, and I will be safe and quiet and cured!_

_It's all on you, Judas. Don't tell anyone; just come. It's all on you._

_Your faithful servant,_

_John Francis Holtz_

Scully's heart was throbbing and straining at her chest. Her breath came in burning gasps. Her hands were shaking and sweating inside the latex gloves. Fear filled her completely, leaving room for no other emotion. It was fear for Thomas, fear for herself, but mostly fear for Jude. How long had she been sitting here? How much time had already been lost?

Without thinking, every motion sudden and jerky, the world blurring at the edge of her vision, Scully threw herself down the stairs, out the front door and into her car, pulling off the plastic gloves as she went. There was no time to think, no time to consider, only action and reaction in a cyclone of instinctual movement. The car was started, the accelerator jumped, the vehicle catapulting into the streets- no time to consider or remember the activities between, only stop-motion passage of time and space.

Scully wove in and out of traffic and reached the interstate in a lurch of time lost between the suburbs and the highway- no time to remember how she got between the two. Brown hills outside the window, thin pellets of rain like ferocious fevered drumbeat on the windshield- where had the city gone? No time to recall. In her memory there was only the erratic, frantic beat of her heart and the constant refrain in her head: there's no time, there's no time.

What was happening now, wherever they were? Was blood spilling and were knives slashing even this moment as she sat in her car, practically meandering down the highway as the rain came thicker and faster, knocked aside by the terrifyingly slow slice of the windshield wipers? She pressed the accelerator again, and the car jumped forward, hurling itself against the rain and the rain hurling itself against the car, and the noise rising to deafening proportions.

Around her the sepia colored hills began to rise into sharper points, and the slamming of her heart began slowly to calm. Reason began to assert itself again. The rain had begun to fall in earnest now, and the sky above was a thick black and purple broiling mass like a bruise. The wind buffeted the car as the altitude increased, making it quiver slightly beneath her hands on the steering wheel. The wheels hummed as they fought for traction on the wet pavement.

Scully could not see any buildings around her, only the darkening brown and red landscape. Glancing over, she saw with surprise that it was almost three in the afternoon. The fuel gauge on the car was low, and Scully realised with a start that no one knew where she was. Not Mulder, not Dan, not anyone. She immediately reached down for her cell phone, fumbling in its usual place behind the emergency brake, but there was nothing there. Next she patted along the dashboard, then rustled through the glove compartment, one eye on the road and one on the jumble of odds and ends that her fingers were picking through. There was nothing.

Trying not to panic, she gently guided the car over to the side of the road, fighting against the wind and rain-slick surface. Reaching up, she flicked on the overhead light, and the car was bathed in a warm glow. Slowly, methodically, she searched the entire car: under the seats, between cushions, in the door pockets, in the glove compartment at least three times. Finally she was forced to conclude, with a small chill in the pit of her stomach, that she did not have her cell phone. She was cut off. The rain beat in regular and riotous sound against the car.

She climbed back into the driver's seat and started the vehicle in a rush of noise, temporarily drowning out the rain. She set off down the highway, the pavement rising and rising against the swell of the Wasatch Plateau, her eyes scanning against the falling water for lights. She crept along the road, beginning to be worried by the amount of rain falling, remembering how hard the ground had been for the last few weeks. This area, because of its many river canyons, was prone to flash floods, and with baked earth like there had been, the slightest shower could create a deluge of water into all of the nearby waterways. She remembered her casual warning to Mulder, days and days ago:

_"I thought this was the desert, Scully. What's with all the rain?"_ he had asked, a flippant grin on his face.

_"It's October," _she had flung back absently_. "Nearly November. This is when we start to get rain... It's actually very unsafe; the ground is still too hard and can't absorb the water yet. There are flash floods around this time of year."_

Her stomach twisted. That was the last thing she needed- on top of being cut off, to be trapped by a flood. Time wore on, and Scully began to notice water streaming from the hillside at the edge of the highway. The day was as dark as night, and it appeared closer to ten than four o'clock.

She knew that there was only one village between Provo- near Salt Lake- and Price, but she was desperately hoping for a gas station or even a remote house, where she could use the phone. She had been gone too long for Mulder to not know that something was wrong, and she felt her heart thump as she imagined his worry. She just had to find a way to call him. Her eyes watched for lights by the roadside again. There was a distant clap of thunder.

All of a sudden, Scully put on the brakes, and the car slid along the road. On her left, she had seen the murky outlines of a gas station, but there were no lights on. Gently, carefully, she pulled the car into the lot, and stopped in front of one of the pumps. Thankful for the roof, she jumped out of the car and pushed the nozzle into the tank, pressing the lever on the handle. Nothing happened.

Anxiety gnawed at her, but she saw a man come out of the store portion of the station, bent against the blowing rain. When he got closer, she saw that he had a craggy, weather-beaten face, and that the hat he had jammed onto his head was crumpled and stained. He was carrying an orange gasoline jug.

"You're better going back," he called to her as he drew closer. "Power's out all over the area. The pumps don't work, but I can fill you up from this." Scully nodded, and he raised the jug and carefully funnelled the fuel into the car. "You come up from the city?" he asked as he did.

"Yes," she replied. "I need to get to Price."

"It'll be tough going," he said. "Roads are swamped, power's out, and you've still got a good ways to go."

"It's very important that I make it there today." Making a decision, she pulled her badge from the inside pocket of her suit jacket. "I'm a federal agent on a case, and I need to use your phone."

He pushed his cap back. "I'm afraid not. Phone's are out too, all down the county. The radio said so, before it conked out about a half hour ago."

Frustration and fear mounting, Scully paid for the gas and struck back out onto the road, on into the storm.

_- - - -_

_He was worried by the water, by the rate at which it was rising. His visitor had arrived late, and now the rising river threatened to ruin all his plans. It was no good to get his answers and then to be drowned like a rat inside the hollowed out pilings of the bridge._

_He glanced at the visitor where he cowered, staring senselessly at the plaything nearby, at the blood that had begun to mix with the river water on the rock-hard red floor of the den. It was becoming hard to see, but still the Visitor's raven black hair glinted in the dark light. Unable to help it, he reached a hand forward to touch. It was so like that of the father…_

_"So," he said, as the Visitor recoiled from his touch. "You owe me some answers."_

- - - -

College of Eastern Utah  
Price, Carbon County  
5: 03 pm

Scully made her way through the dark corridors of the college residence, finding her way with the aid of a large flashlight, its yellow beam cluttered and swimming with floating dust motes and kicked-up dirt. She scanned the faded numbers on the plywood doors, squinting against the dust and the dark, and after several minutes of wandering, she found room 341, John Holtz's.

Palms sweating slightly, she flicked open the holster of her gun and drew it out, pulling back the hammer with her thumb in readiness, listening to the quiet mechanical noises as the insides drew taught. Reaching out, she put her hand on the doorknob, twisted, and pushed. The unlocked door swung open with a slight squeal, and the tiny room inside was empty and dark.

Senses alert, Scully stepped inside and looked around. There was only a narrow bed and shoddy desk with no computer apparent. The floor was scattered with boxes of clothing and canned food, and the closet seemed unused from where she stood. Careful not to disturb anything, she crept across the dingy carpet to the closet, whose door was hanging slightly ajar. Her flashlight beam jumped around the room with her movement, lighting objects at odd moments and angles, making distorted shadows leap and fade and flare across the scuffed walls.

When she was close enough, Scully put out a hand and pushed the closet door open with an avalanche of dust. Inside was a collection to rival the Holtz home in Montana. Every square inch was covered in newspaper clippings. Scully didn't even have to look to see their subject matter. On the floor were several shoeboxes full of other clippings, some of which Scully could tell had been printed off microfiche machines. She hadn't seen one of those in years.

Latex gloves back on her questing hands, Scully dug through the boxes of clippings, and was rewarded when her skin collided with something solid, something metallic. Her fingers closed around it and pulled it to the surface, her flashlight pointed and ready. When she saw what she held in her hands she started, sweat breaking out on her brow, expansive and cool in the stuffy room. It was a kitchen knife, crusted and corroded with old blood, and it stank of rot and tasted of the copper tang of blood and the black sweetness of decay when she breathed through her mouth, over her tongue.

Carefully she placed the knife back in the bed of yellowed newsprint, and stood up again, her back and knees protesting. Turning, she began to head for the door, satisfied that there was enough evidence here to put him away even without the letter, but her zigzagging flashlight caught something else. Above her head, a water marked ceiling tile was out of place, deeper darkness exposed in the crack the displacement created.

Pulling over the stained desk chair, Scully climbed up and pressed against the tile. It slid further back, and Scully gagged at the smell that billowed forth from inside. It smelled like old meat and metal, like the knife and like rot, and yet very like a smell Scully knew intimately, which she usually encountered disguised by disinfectant and sterile sheets. It smelled like human flesh, flesh too long dead.

Fighting nausea, Scully swept her hand up and into the ceiling space, seeking until her grip closed around something tensile and plastic. She pulled it forward, into the beam of her flashlight, and the horrific smell increased tenfold. She held in her hand a small rectangular tupperware container, the sealing lid curving open at one corner, presumably from the same hurried carelessness that had left the ceiling tile disturbed and the doors ajar and unlocked. The yellow beam struck the inside of the container, and illuminated a thick red liquid, swirling stickily with motion. Floating in the liquid was a chunk of something pale and disintegrating, green and black encroaching on the natural tones of the human skin.

Fear flooding her in earnest now, Scully made a quick decision and put the container down on the bed, and then moved as quickly as she could to the door and away down the hallway, the flashlight glancing off the walls. If John was not in his room, then he and Judas must be wherever he kills them, she reasoned quickly as she dashed down the stairs to the parking lot. Where would that be?

A passage from the letter, whose contents were now seared on her brain, strafed across her mind: …_put out the burning that she scorches as I try to stay away from my bridge and my bodies…_ And then another: …_ come to me, come to me and my bridge and my bodies and my Beast…_ The bridge…

Scully dashed through the deluge of rain to her car, the freezing water streaming down her head and neck and through her hair. She threw herself into the car and scrabbled in the glove compartment, finally pulling out the area map of Price that had been in her car since before she had gone to Dan's that morning. Was it only that morning? She flicked on the overhead light and unfolded the map, scanning and searching, and finally her eyes lighted on the solution.

About eight miles west of Price, on a the Price River, there was a ruined bridge.

Scully slammed the gearshift into drive, and tore out of the parking lot as fast as traction would allow. She was out of the town proper in minutes, out in the Green River Desert and the canyons and peaks of the San Rafael Swell. The wheels whined and spun in the inches of water on the road, they complained against the eroding gravel of the road beneath and the climb and fall of the track. After a ten minutes, Scully judged her position in the dark and swung off the road into the wilderness, murmuring a vehement prayer. On her right she could just make out the steadily rising river as it advanced toward her tires, an inch of the water's progression looking like feet out of fear.

Finally the car's progress was stopped by a sudden swell of the land, and it began to slide back down with the flood water than ran down the hills. In desperation, Scully yanked the emergency brake, grinding it into obedience, and then she leapt out of the car into the inches of frigid water on the red ground, feeling simultaneously the bite and sting of the cold and the gritty remains of a road beneath her feet. Following the road, she bit her lip and followed the spine of the ridge, her head bent against the onslaught of the wind and water and height. The flashlight in her hand did little more than glow dimly against her leg.

At last the ground began to descend beneath her, and Scully saw, jammed between the sides of two hills, the crumbling span of the massive bridge. Her gun out, cocked, and in her other hand, she ran down the hill into the dark and the roar of the water, and when she reached the bottom the flashlight caught the gaping opening of a hollow piling. Rounding the corner, her gun and flashlight crossed over before her, she illuminated the inside of the bridge, and took in the tableau in a moment.

Against the back wall there was a chained and manacled young boy, streaming blood and screaming so hard that it made her throat burn to hear. In front of him stood Jude and someone else, a young man. The young man was naked and dripping with blood, something glinting and metal clenched in his fist. Tension blazed from every inch of their bodies. Jude's face was contorted in a cry she could not hear.

Scully gathered herself and yelled above the howl of the wind:

"Freeze! FBI!"

- - - -  
A/N: Only one chapter and the epilogue left! Thanks for all the reviews from last time, and keep on sending them in.

Oh, and reviewer **083186**:I wanted to include M&S's sexual relationship, but I wanted to do it without being smutty. It's too late for this story, but maybe in a future one or if I re-write sections of this one later. But thanks so much for leaving a review and the suggestion!

-Ceilidh


	12. The Red Flood

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

- - - -

Outside of Price, Utah  
October 28  
5:37 pm

"Freeze! FBI!"

Scully's cry burst out against the roar and crash of the wind and rain. Her hair was wet and frigid against her neck. Her hands were hot and slick against the cold metal of her gun. Her elbows were locked, her biceps shaking.

Inside the darkness of the bridge piling, the figures in the bizarre tableau were frozen and silent. John Holtz stood dripping and naked, awash with a mixture of rainwater and blood, his scabbed hands clutching a gleaming scalpel. Jude was almost humming with tension, his eyes dark and angry, desperate and powerless. At the far back, Scully could just make out Thomas Abrams, his features arrested in a twisted grimace of agony.

Blinking against the rain in her eyelashes, Scully wrenched herself forward, advancing slowly, every muscle taut and heart gushing fear. The freezing, dirty floodwater lapped and struck at her just above her ankles. She could barely move through it.

Wrenching her voice once more above the elements and terror, she cried: "Don't move! John Holtz, don't move!" The hard black of the gun's barrel quivered at the edge of her vision as she advanced by inches, legs pushing through liquid.

Holtz's eyes flicked back and forth, from her to Jude and back, to Thomas and to her and then down at the blade in his own hands. His eyes were chipped, rocky green, dead and opaque.

Suddenly Thomas screamed. It ripped from his throat and tore at the air, nameless, soundless, primal shrill shrieking noise. The boy flailed and screamed and rattled his rusty chains, his eyes bulging and blood flecking to the sides of his gaping mouth.

The ice of the water reached Scully's mid-calf.

"Thomas! Thomas, listen! Listen to me!" Scully could feel the air grate in her own throat. "I'm here to help you!"

Holtz's gaze slid to Thomas, something flickering behind it. He licked his lips.

Scully stepped under the overhang of the piling, and the noise of the flood dimmed against her ears. The water licked at her skin through her pants.

Jude still stood frozen, his obsidian eyes locked on John Holtz, hands splayed by his sides, his breath coming in heavy gasps. The water was almost to his knees.

"John," Scully tried again, pitching her voice against the screams, "John, do you know who I am?"

The faintest of nods, the gaze still flicking like a reptile.

"I'm the only one who can get us out of this, you understand?"

A wet gag from the darkness as Thomas ran out of air.

"I'm going to come closer, John. I'm going to come closer to you." She slid forward by increments. "We're all of us in a lot of trouble, aren't we, John? You, me, Judas… Thomas."

The gaze locked on her now. A voice, high and young, monotone. "I don't have my answers yet."

Scully forced a foot forward. The water bit at the backs of her knees. "You can get them later, John, once we're all out of danger. I promise. You were right, John, Jude knows everything. He just can't tell you right now." The muzzle of the gun dipped for a moment, and Scully concentrated against the rise of the water and the cold and the insane tempo of her blood.

The gaze hardened again.

The water nipped her thighs, and her body began to tremble.

The voice again: "How do you know about my questions? What do you know of my quest?" The hand holding the blade began to shake. "Judas told, didn't he, as all Judases do! I knew, I knew!"

A quick throwaway glimpse at Jude showed his eyes wide and desperate. He had eyes that see the end fast approaching. Scully pitched her voice again and forced out sounds.

"No, John! Judas never told! I know all about you, John; I'm a detective. It's my job to know. But I can get us out of here."

There was a stretching moment of silence, and Scully moved again. Thomas wretched, and Scully saw blood on his lips. The water that swirled around her thighs was thick and muddy, dirty red from the dust and the hue of the soil. It burned with cold.

Suddenly, a shake of the head from John Holtz. "No. No, we're not getting out! I want my answers now!"

With a cry Jude found his voice. "I told you, I told you! I don't know anything! Please, just stop it!" It was begging, pleading, unbearably young. Scully could remember the last time she had heard his voice like that, in the horrific dark, inches away from another killer. She could remember his voice, begging for his daddy, the tones filled with fear and blood and anger.

The water passed her mid-thigh.

There's no more time, her body screamed. Panic crawled along her skin with the rising flood, cold and creeping through her veins in icy invasion. Panic had never felt like this before. Panic had always been thudding and wild, noisy and desperate, hot and spinning; now she felt nothing but rising cold. Freezing every particle, sliding over every inch, panic clothed her in desperation.

Panic was thick red water and enclosing walls; panic was the slow shine of razor; panic was this relentless flood that engulfed the senses by increments and left no time for even adrenaline. She was so tired.

The black-red walls dripped moisture, and the faces of all around her pale and floating in the darkness. Rain and wind swirled outside, blasting and twining strands of weather on gusts of gale into the piling and hard against her back. Before her vision the eyes of John Holtz hung, restless and opaque, in constant motion, milky and dead. Something stirred on their shallow surface.

She stared down the barrel of her gun and knew fear.

Suddenly tension grabbed her in a gushing vise.

In a ferocious whirling moment, something struck her in a blast of force. Air spewed from her lungs, bruises exploding as hard mass smashed her body. The heat of her gun was gone from her hands, and in the next second all there was was water.

Water filled her mouth and eyes. Water penetrated her throat and violated her lungs. Water was a thousand frozen razors slicing her flesh. Water seized her like manacles, like prison, like death.

Impressions came and went. Something massive and heavy on her body. Silt and rock grating the skin off her back. A second of air before force smashed her into the water again. Spinning and current and roaring, rushing liquid like the end of the world.

In a burst of white pain and a cloud of crimson, metal digging into her flesh, the snap and recoil of severed muscle, the unthinkable violation as her body screamed against such traumatic invasion.

Writhing and twisting in the water, eyes open for a moment and mouth filled with water laden with copper tang and salt. Lungs bursting and stars exploding on the blackness. Desperation, deprivation, clenching stomach and a feeling almost of frustration. Tongue thick and gritty in her mouth.

Next, suddenly and blissfully, air. The weight, the force, the mass off her body, and her feet shoving against the swirling dirt below. Head breaking the surface and water gushing from her nose and mouth, foreign against her lips.

All around her was screaming and flailing, blurry and faceless, her vision washed away by the floodwater. Grit scratched her eyeballs as she blinked once, hard. The noise was chaotic and reverberant, wild and frantic.

Light flared in blinding red, orange, yellow, white, a flash of ignition and a shout, a roar, a blast of combustion. A smash and spray of liquid as a body fell beneath the surface.

Jude stood above the water, his face bloody and his features twisted and grotesque, contorted in an emotion so strong she could not even begin to conceive of a word for it. He screamed again, words unintelligible and incoherent, the noise all that mattered, a primal shriek that tore from his soul and convulsed his body.

His eyes burned black, and Judas slammed the trigger again and again, each blast of mingled cacophony of rage mechanical and animal, a violent inferno of catharsis and vengeance.

As the magazine emptied shell by shell, explosions and eruptions of liquid constant as the bullets smashed the surface of the water, one sound, one word, made its way from the twisted features of the boy to her, a wrenching rage-filled cry.

As Judas Laurence Hoffman stood, the empty machinery clicking and whirring and empty now as his fingers pounded the trigger in vain, he screamed out for Daddy.

- - - -

Scully didn't know how much time had passed, but she gradually became conscious that she was calling Jude's name. He was standing, silent, staring at the figure floating face-up on the rapidly rising floodwater. His expression was vacant.

Pain burned at her attention, and she looked down at her right arm. As far as she could tell, at some point during the underwater struggle the scalpel had been plunged into her right bicep, severing the muscle and several veins. The wound gaped, and Scully fought for equilibrium, squeezing pressure on it with her left hand, her mind racing, working to develop some kind of plan.

The water had reached her waist.

"Judas," she called, gasping against the remnants of fluid in her throat. "Jude, I need you to listen to me very carefully. We need to get Thomas out of here; he's chained up, Judas."

The boy stared at her vacantly.

"Listen to me! I need your help, Jude; I can't fire the gun. He cut my arm." Urgency was engulfing her again, and she cast her gaze frantically over to the smaller boy, who had lost consciousness and was only held up by the manacles that bound his wrists. "We have to get Thomas free somehow. The water is almost to his neck, Jude!"

Slowly, torturously, Jude turned to see, and as he did his gaze seemed to sharpen. Suddenly his face was clear again, and the set of his mouth was determined.

"What do I have to do?"

Scully let out a huge breath. "There is another cartridge of ammunition in my jacket pocket. Get it first."

Jude waded towards her, forcing his way through the thick red water. Scully fought back frustration, and clenched her teeth against it and the red-hot pain in her arm. A hand fumbled in her pocket, and Jude withdrew the item. She quickly reloaded the gun with her left hand, the wound spurting blood without pressure.

"All right, that's perfect." She sucked in a deep breath, and pushed her soaked hair out of her eyes. "Now, I want you to shoot out the chains."

Doubt flashed in his eyes, replaced with certitude. He waded closer, and then there were two hoarse retorts of gunfire. With a smash, Thomas fell into the water, and then Jude gathered him up in his arms.

The water chest high, Scully grabbed Holtz's arm with her left hand and pulled him toward the open river. Jude was close behind, and the cold grabbed at their lungs with icy bands. As they left the shelter of the piling, the wind blasted and the rain smashed their faces. There was a moment of suspension, and then ground beneath their feet.

Higher, higher up the bank, dragging, panic rising- old panic, hot and throbbing- and then no more water, only wet dirt and rivulets of rainwater. Scully felt her legs give, and her check slammed into the earth, grit against her cheek, an answering thud as Jude hit the ground. The floodwater rose again, and covered her feet.

Fate, black and velvet and opaque, settled over her. Darkness closed around her eyes, and the taste on her tongue was of blood and dust. A breath rattled in her ear, and as the fog thickened into oblivion, she realized it came from John Holtz- surprise didn't even have time to register as the sky fell, her eyes closed, and the water rose to cover her legs.

Her darkness fell too soon to see the bright white of the helicopter searchlight play over the hard red ground and across the swollen water, to finally catch her in its saving glare.

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**A/N**: Thanks to everybody who was been reading this story, and sticking with it through my appalling organizational (read: updating) skills.

There's only the epilogue left, so hang in there! Please review!

Ceilidh


	13. Epilogue

**Title:** Canticle

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**Author:** CeilidhO

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**Summary:** Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")

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**Disclaimer:** Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…

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Carbon County Courthouse  
Price, Utah  
May 26, 2008  
3:54 pm  
Seven months later.

"...Guilty."

At the foreman's words, the room burst into joyous noise, shouts and cheers and shared embraces. In the midst of the crowd, Scully closed her eyes in abject relief, tension sliding off her like a weight. As silence was demanded, she remembered that others were still waiting for justice, for deliverance, that first single pronouncement a hopeful beginning for the series to come.

"To the charge of first degree aggravated murder in the death of Simon William Brigham, we the jury find the defendant... Guilty.

"To the same charge in the death of Matthew Edward Hughes, we the jury find the defendant... Guilty.

"To the final charges of aggravated child kidnapping, aggravated unlawful confinement, and aggravated assault on a child, in the cases of Casey Jerome Whitman, Simon William Brigham, Matthew Edward Hughes, Thomas Robert Abrams, and Judas Laurence Hoffman, we the jury find the defendant... Guilty."

The room held it's breath, waiting. The judge leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "And have you reached a sentence?"

The foreman, a heavyset man in his fifties, cleared his throat. "We have, Your Honor. Taking into account the defendant's age, mental health, and exceptional past experience, we the jury sentence John Francis Holtz to life imprisonment without chance of parole."

In Scully's direct line of sight, she saw the slumped shoulders of the young man at the defendant's table collapse onto the wood surface and begin to shake.

The judge leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "In that case, the trial of the State of Utah vs. John Holtz is now adjourned." The man's features hardened. "Get that thing out of my courtroom."

With the slam of the gavel, the room erupted into noise. Everywhere people were hugging, laughing, crying, slapping each other on the back and swearing vehemently in happiness. Reporters pushed out from the gallery, swarming to start interviews and scribbling frantic notes. In all the chaos and confusion, only three people remained immobile and seated.

Scully could see Jude's glossy black hair in between the shifting hordes of people, across the courthouse in what had become known as Mourner's Corner, where the grieving families and solemn children had sat through all the long weeks of the trial.

Directly ahead of both of them were the shuddering back and shoulders of John Holtz, clad in a white and grey prison jumpsuit and so thin that his bones made harsh angles beneath the fabric. They sat in a silent triad, each linked to the others in a bond inexplicably strong. Scully allowed her eyes to drift back and forth between the two boys.

She felt again how weak she had been in the weeks after the events at the bridge, how her body had lain just like this, faint and unresponsive. She had woken in the hospital on the 31st, on Jude's birthday, after four days of unconsciousness. When her eyes had cracked open, Mulder was sleeping in a chair by her side, bathed in the warm yellow light of the curtained room. When she had croaked out his name, he had held her and kissed her and chastened her all in a voice thick with pain and relief.

Mulder had explained in shattered tones how he had discovered her missing hours after the fact, last seen early afternoon, her cell phone ringing and ringing and eventually found in a pile of Jude's bedclothes. He explained how he had found the letter and determined where she had gone, how he had stormed the Field Office and demanded the helicopter; how he had flown above the flood pleading every moment with whatever force could hear him that she was not beneath its red water; how he had found them all unconscious on the riverbank, Scully's pulse so faint and her form so still that he thought her dead; about the infinite ride back to the hospital, every person involved at the bridge miraculously still alive. He spoke of the long hours in the Intensive Care waiting room, of receiving the final joyful news of her survival.

The scalpel- John Holtz's scalpel- had severed her bronchial artery and her right bicep, causing massive blood loss and tissue damage. What was more, the wound had become infected from the filthy river water, as had the others, and they were all confined in the same hospital for weeks with raging fevers, hypothermia and shock.

Those weeks had brought some of the strangest dreams Scully had ever experienced.

After her release from the hospital, a flurry of press and fear had rushed her back to Washington, sequestered there, recovering slowly, waiting for news of the trial, and finally, agonisingly, returning to Utah to sit through the endless weeks of testimony, to give her own, crucial account of events; to sit wracked with guilt and pain through Jude's pivotal speech; to learn with shock and horror of the tiny skeleton of another little boy, unearthed beneath the bridge by the ravages of the flood, the boy whose vindication had been achieved through the first guilty verdict read this day.

There was a flurry of motion at the front of the courtroom, jerking Scully to the present, as the guards stepped forward and lifted John Holtz to his feet. Reporters rushed forward, as close as they could get to the railings, and snapped photographs in blazes of white flashbulb lights. Scully found herself at the railing as well, a peculiar feeling of mingled fear and loathing pulsing through her as the thin young man- the boy, really- was led through the sealed doors and disappeared from her view forever.

His dead green eyes were the last thing she saw of him, thrown back to gaze at her, stark against the surrounding white of his pale skin and paler jumpsuit, chipped and flinty, shallow and milky, deadly and still dripping in the blinding rain of their past.

As the reporters trailed away, dispersing away down the outside steps of the massive spired courthouse, Scully drew a hand across her eyes and mouth. The late spring sunshine was strong against her face, close and warm and rising off the stones beneath her feet. Mulder came up to stand behind her, his presence gently brushing at her senses, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

"Are you about ready to go, Scully?" he asked carefully, his tone neutral and sympathetic.

Scully cast her gaze around the thinning crowd at the foot of the steps, her eyes catching the familiar faces: Dan and Peggy and their daughters, with newly adopted Jeremy laughing and flicking pebbles with glee, crouching adoringly at his new father's feet; Mrs. Holderman and her older son Cameron, Jude leaning in exhaustion against his tall foster brother's side, Mr. Holderman conspicuously absent; to the Brighams and the Abrams and the newly inducted Whitmans, the parents of the long-lost little boy uncovered beneath the bridge; to Rob and Jenna and the Abrams family, grasping the moments of publicity, deep in conversation with a reporter, Thomas' tiny face appearing fleetingly from behind his uncle's long legs.

Scully watched Thomas, examined his features and the way his body shied from noise and light and touch as if beyond his control. She turned to Mulder, weariness and sadness heavy on her eyes and shoulders.

"Do you remember what I said, Mulder, months ago, about the nature of the victim?"

He turned to squint at her against the glare. "About violence being like a haemorrhage, about how there's only so much we can do to stop it?"

"Exactly. We've stopped the bleeding, Mulder, but how much has already been lost, damaged and flooded beyond repair or reason? Does the cycle ever stop? How do we know that we won't find ourselves right here, years from now, mopping up the blood again, locking away another boy left crippled and broken from the events we believe that we're ending here today?"

Her gaze returned to Thomas, to his quiet dark eyes and his scarred and trembling body, and Mulder's followed. "I suppose we don't know, Scully, we can't know, not for sure. We can only trust in the strength of these new victims, and rely on them to keep us all from ever standing here again. We have to trust that they will all, somehow, be all right."

He reached over and took her hand in his gentle grip, and led her down the stone steps of the courthouse. On the final step, he reached out and clasped her chin, pulling her to him gently. The sun was as warm as his touch, and when they pulled apart she smiled softly up into his face.

Still smiling, Scully turned and cast one last gaze over the assembled pantheon of victims lit brightly in the falling rays. Conviction did its best to fill her, and she breathed a final goodbye.

"All right, Mulder," she said. "I'm ready to go."

- - - - -  
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**Final A/N:** Well, this is it for this story and this fic-universe. It's been an incredible experience for me to start out in fanfiction with a story like _Disciple_, which so many of you loved, and for you readers to be kind enough to embrace my attempts at a continuation of the universe and the story line. Before I get much mushier, I'll just say a resounding, loving, heartfelt thank-you.

There is a last reviewer's question to answer: **Guesto-Chan**, thanks for noticing my little continuity slip-up. I've edited the previous chapter to fix the mistake.

Then, I'd like to thank, as I did for _Disciple_, all of the reviewers up to this time, in chronological order: **Sqully**,** BrokenHeartsAndShatteredDreams**,** Gillian Leigh**,** Spooky'sAngel**,** Niobium**,** fae-de-luna**,** person**,** divad**,** jesseanne21**,** zelly**,** Erin**,** nina**,** asia27**, **thefreakyone**, **rachel**,** John**,** S-Bel**,** guardchik**, **V31**,** K**,** XImAnXFileX**,** 083186**,** Stefany**,** KT**, and **Guesto-Chan. **Last but not at all least, **Kennedy Morgan**, who sent me a wonderful letter.

I'll being writing something else for you soon, I hope, so until then, thanks again and again.

-Ceilidh


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